Earlier this summer, somewhere in August:

I travel to a place called Avalon. Avalon is a haven of emerald ocean, ice cream, sunshine and evening fog, and time that flows slowly, like honey. There is a warmth that fills your veins, leaving you healthy and whole.

I stay in my grandma's house, alone, high on a hill. Spend the evenings staring over the lip of the deck, down onto the town below. Cook every meal with ingredients I've trekked up the dirt shortcut in my backback. In the evenings I play the piano, sing, look at photo albums, write, finish a bottle of wine... And during the days I swim: swim until the water has moved over my tired muscles and washed my aching heart.

Avalon is a destination, worthy of a journey of almost any length. But don't ever forget: getting there is just as good.

The ferry is sleek and fast, it hops over the waves and scatters lovely white foam. I climb on and watch my fellow passengers shuffle inside, blindly pushing for the seats in the safer interior. Through the windows I can see them pull out their phones, magazines, books. Pull their hats across their faces and fall asleep. But me? I always head for the bow. Or the rails along the outside wall. This time I sit with my back against the coiled dock lines, looking out to the horizon, occasionally licking salt from my lips.

And oh, this majesty: the sun filtering through building clouds. The rhythm of the waves, the seagulls that follow us and can't quite keep up, the lilting patterns of the water cascading against the body of the ship. It takes my breath away, this hour of constant excitement, a world that no one else seems to care to see.

And later....

Later in my trip I come to a place called Morro Bay. A rock and coastline so beautiful I could stay for a week. I sleep in a tent, wake up to the smiles of my parents and the smell of fresh coffee and bacon cooking over a fire. I travel by kayak through an estuary filled with white pelicans, seals. Even make a direct crossing to a mountain of sand-dunes and cartwheel down them until I fall, dizzy, into the golden sand.

Morro Bay: another destination. A place worth travelling, maybe a place worth staying for awhile.

I have two choices for the way home. There is the freeway everyone chooses, the freeway I usually take: a few hours of travelling in near mindlessness, 80 miles an hour straight up through the middle of California. Or there is Hwy 1, miles and many more hours of rocky coast, narrow roadway, curves over cliffs that will stop your heart. It's a road only the brave (or wandering) choose to take. I take it. I am a wanderer.

Here is the ocean, the fog, sea birds and seals. Here is the way the blue clouds in the sky meet the dark line of the ocean, the sound of waves crashing against barnacles and rock. Here is attention, focus, the heady satisfaction of downshifting around a blind corner. I stop at every viewpoint, take fifty pictures in an hour: a crow, an elephant seal, the earth that passes before my windshield. I'm on a road most people never see. And I can see it...

Every time I take the long way, I forget about how pretty it can turn out to be.

I'm taking the long way, now. I'm not sure where I'm going; every day seems new, different. But the train is moving forward, to somewhere, such lovely momentum. And I am looking out the window: what perfect beauty, this life!

Take the long way home. As often as possible. Just sit back, relax. Ignore the clock; look out the window. Look at the world around you, learn from everything you pass along the way. Eventually you'll get there, of course. But the better part - maybe the best part - is the journey.

Feeling extremely productive today. Oh, the focus, the speed, the agility with which a lady can edit databases!

Hmm. I'm increasingly afraid that this may be due to the fact that, for reasons completely unfathomable, "What Will We Do With a Drunken Sailor" has been running in my head on repeat since I woke up.

(Earlye in the mor-nin'!)

Maybe the best work song EVER.

As a news source (or even an entertainment source) The Huffington Post generally drives me up the wall. But this article seems relevant to so many of us in this generation, or perhaps anyone who's navigating (or contemplating) a transition. New Age, perhaps, but at least worth a glance:

Happiness and Depression in the Midlife

There was a time when I was blogging regularly. At first it was a challenge, then a habit, then a thrill - almost an addiction. Every so often I'd post something to the effect of: "this is changing my life."

I know: cheesy.

But oh! I could not have known, then, the service I was providing to my thirty-something self. Because now, at a time where I feel alternately lost, found, confused, and... metamorphosing, I realize I have a light-post. Here. Because even if I was younger when I wrote here, and most of my posts centered upon events long since past, I was still burying things (perhaps the most important things) between the lines of each entry: my wishes, frustrations, needs, and values. It blows my mind a little that my past self could become such a future compass, but... I'll go with it.

At this point I've reread most of my old posts, even the majority of your comments. I cherish this place. And for the sake of myself (and oh, sweet self-indulgence), I've created a new tag: best of. It's a shortcut for me. I need it.

Some posts are "bests" because I'm happy with the writing (Yesterday I Got Lost and Don't Rescue Me are two of my favorites). Some because the words of wisdom, however difficult, are again necessary (Recovering). Many remind me of my love of nature (Eagles, Redwoods, a zillion others), some my constant need for the imagery of skin. Still one of the passages that makes me swoon a little:

No sensation but touch. Just the fingers of cold air that explore exposed flesh. Just the pounding of my heart. Just the dark. This is how I would have it: the opaque cloth of midnight pulled over my eyes until I am left with nothing but wide wonder, lips parted for the taste of mystery, waiting without breath for the power of everything flesh and new, everything beautiful and alive, everything that happens in the savage tenderness of the night..."

The rest are just posts that make me smile, or good moments in life that I'd like to remember.

You might ask: "wait, you spent a day of your vacation reading and 'liking' your own journal? Isn't that a little..."

The answer is YES. Yes. If it comes across as self-obsessed, a little egotistical... Yes. I'm okay with that. It probably is. At the moment, I think I need a lot of that.

Hmm. So now, you: have you ever read between the lines of your writing? Really? Something worth trying. Go forth, to ye inboxes and diaries and post-it notes. Explore. You never know what you might find.

What if you had the chance to start over? Where would you go? What would you do?

Would you love better, would you live more richly, would you pick up the phone, would you spend more time following dreams?

Would you say yes when the word landed on your tongue — instead of the more commonly-used forms of no?

Forget your lists and old definitions. Start with today. Who are you? Who have you become, over these wild and beautiful years? What do you want? What holds you back, what makes your heart sing? Ask yourself; there is no wrong answer.

We can never go back. But we can move forward: brightened, awakening, stronger by the day... and ready for whatever adventure lies ahead.

Adventure. Because I can't think of any better word for life.

Cheers.

This scene is so lovely. Worth watching again.

Thank you, giftederic, for the reminder.

I just typed an email to an old friend. And ended a paragraph about the utter up/down/sleep/wake/cry/laugh/dream/hope/question/wha-? bizarreness of life right now with: "It's totally fucking beautiful."

I want to live that way. I would like to own that phrase. One day, I will be a frail old lady on my deathbed. If my grandchildren ask what I think about life, that is what I hope to tell them.

It's totally fucking beautiful.

We just received notice that our neighborhood drinking water tested at nine times the EPA acceptable level for arsenic. And may have been at that level for more than a year.

According to the NRDC, lifetime exposure (I know I know, "lifetime" is different than one year, but still) at just five times the acceptable level can increase your risk of dying from cancer from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100. How about nine times?

I'm upset. If the last bad test, at 0.094 mg/L (above the EPA max of 0.010 mg/L) was in January 2008, a year ago, why [expletives removed] weren't we notified a year ago?

More on this when I know more.

Jesus.

I am upset.

>The excellent thing about life, especially here in the happiest precinct in the US, is that while you fret and frazzle, the natural world still exists around you, bold and dynamic and beautiful as always.

The birds have returned to our woods, ducks in the river and sparrows in the trees; every morning they greet our sleepy heads with a cacophony of happy songs. And a few weeks ago (I kid you not), our way to work was blocked by a rafter of wild turkeys. The male (big, bald, unbearably ugly) fanned tail feathers and fawned over his mistresses. Rob and I spent the rest of the day showing our amazed coworkers the picture.

New buds sprout from every frost-parched bush, redwood shoots emerge willy-nilly just about everywhere. In fact if every redwood sprout grew a tree, the planet would be overrun. They are inescapable: in all of my planters, in the cats' waterdish, between the wood slats of our deck, in the little bits of dirt some animal tracked atop a boulder. A world of tentative, unfurling green.

Today I braved the mud and wind and went for a run in the redwoods. And discovered exactly why wind is so terrifying in the forest. It's not just your imagination. It's not so much the thought of trees falling, or the sheer creepiness of wind alone. No, it's the sound: I am a child of the beach, so I hear the ocean. Angry ocean: a gust rises up the hillside, blowing through dead branches and leaves and needles—I know the roar is just wind and trees but my subconsciousness hears black water, a giant wave gathering behind me, frothing maw ready to swallow me whole.

Today the gusts picked up as I ran. By the time I hit the cathedral the canopy was a maelstrom, all whooshes and cracks. Limbs four, five, six, seven feet long dropped from the sky and shattered on the forest floor... Away from my my body but not far enough.

I ran with my arms over my head, warding off the sticks and debris. Figuring that even if I looked like an idiot I'd be a living idiot, saved by my brains from being brained by a tree. The flight was mildly terrifying. And also awesome. No crazy forest-ocean gods were going to take me alive, no sir!

Home now, of course (dark, duh), but still pleased with the day, this place. Because maybe I'll lose my job and never see Europe and never afford children and have to give up farm veggies in favor of Top Ramen (maybe I'm melodramatic, but that's another story). But at least I get to occasionally run with the wind... and avoid death-by-braining via the dead arms of a tree. You really have to appreciate the small stuff.

I have a sinking feeling that I might lose my job. One of my two jobs, at least; but probably the one that matters. One of my jobs is part-time and temporary. The other is the real deal, the rock that holds my health benefits and retirement, the result of seven years of service and four upticks that amounted to promotions.

The wall of my office is littered with recognitions and awards, an old certificate for Staff Member of the Year. My bottom drawer holds the documentation of grants and merit increases, glowing performance reviews. But I fear I'm going to go. I smell the gray smell of the impending layoff meeting: the one-on-one my boss and I both dread, where he tells me about a decision that was out of his hands and I thank him for being so kind. Then he returns to his desk and sighs, I walk away and wonder how many resumes I'll have to send, out there into the wide world, just to get one... little... interview.

I can see this. I call it the intuitive knowing of the bones. But maybe (god I hope) it's just paranoia.

No one would select me to go, if personality or teamwork were the only measure of value. But it's not. Because my years here have taken me to a position that I can't easily quantify as "essential". In fact at this stage I'm not sure anyone's position is "essential". In my nightmares everyone's high-higher-ups are sitting in their mahogany boardrooms, discussing how everything we do could be "done by some students". When you really think about it, when you sit down and spend more than five minutes thinking about it, most of our jobs could be done by students. Or perhaps a piece of nifty software. Couldn't they?

Not really.

But that's the way it feels right now.

In the next few months the non-essential jobs are going to be cut. Maybe mine. Maybe yours? Is this the way it feels for you? The way it feels for all of us, as the daily joblessness reports become increasingly dire? We are educated, experienced, motivated, we want to work. But we don't pull the strings, and maybe we're the solution to someone else's budget shortfall.

My best friend from high school is a lawyer. Her husband is a lawyer. Many of her friends are lawyers. And most of them have been laid off, or can smell that same gray smell coming at them. Lawyers, teachers, writers, managers, architects, consultants, secretaries, servers. Somehow I had it in my mind that it would always be the factory workers, that The Depression wouldn't reach us. How insensitive, how naive. We're all in this together, silly, and today is our wake-up call.

So maybe you're like me, sitting here on a Sunday afternoon, wondering what you're going to do. Thinking that rental rates haven't dropped along with the employment rate; if things turn bad you may have to move in with your parents (how funny, to be thirty-something and living at home... but at least you have somewhere to go). We're going for walks in the sun and baking bread—delights, yes, but also activities that don't cost money. We're sure as hell putting off big Americanesque purchases, using the surplus from our paychecks to pay down credit cards and bolster our tiny savings accounts. Because that's the smart thing to do.

So when the cover of Newsweek tells me to stop saving and start spending, I cringe. And skip the article in question, just for today. I know they're right, that we need to spend again, en masse, or we'll all go down together. But how can I take that advice when the future feels so unsure?