Beautiful Memorial Day weekend--C and I went up to Guerneville, a pretty tourist town about two and a half hours North of the Bay Area. There's a community radio station up there, "low power and high spirits." I swear every man, woman and child in Guerneville has their own hour when they can play music, read stories or do whatever they want. Hooray for community radio!

An elf named Berda Lee has a program called "She Said" featuring women writers, and she invited me to be on it. I read some poems old and new and my essay Purple Nails and we chatted. I think it's all listenable at www.kggvfm.org --it was the May 27 nightcast of She Said--I hope it can be gotten via mp3, but Berda was a little vague on the technical details, so I'm not sure. I hope the techno-savants who read this blog will try it and report back.

Anyway, C and I enjoyed our mini-vacation. Berda has a sweet house full of magical tchotchkes and paintings, goddess flags and crystals. It overlooks the glorious basin of the Russian River. We slept amazingly well on a tiny bed under a hand-sewn quilt. The absence of gunshots, sirens, cars with jacked-up stereos broadcasting street-shaking bass lines and other normal ambient sounds of the Oakland hood was refreshing. (As I type this, there's a big, noisy altercation going on outside my window in the street below; some men and women screaming at each other. I wonder if I should call the cops but I don't hear the sound of anyone getting hit, and then it falls suddenly quiet.)

The car ride back was an opportunity to talk deeply. It's all still so new. Without either of us pushing or pulling, this little canoe of our relationship seems to be moving very fast--gliding--down a swiftly flowing river. It feels good. Thrilling, actually; forward mementum, change, after years of poking around in the shallows.

Twenty-two years ago, on Memorial Day 1985, I called Alan's mother in Berkeley (I was living in Cambridge,)and he was there--I wasn't prepared for that--and she handed him the phone. As soon as I heard his voice, I knew, we both knew. I didn't think I would ever know that again. I feel full and young and hopeful and serious and happy.

Played basketball this afternoon with G and did okay--actually scored some good baskets. We played for an hour or so until he twisted his ankle and we had to stop. Then we watched two episodes of The Sopranos; in one of them a major character got whacked and then dismembered in a bathtub. I'm not sure why I like this show so much--oh yeah, the dialogue. The acting. The dialogue and the acting were great. The bathtub dismemberment scene not so much.

I've just printed out everying my advisee emailed me and it comes to about sixty pages. Oy. I have to read and comment on all this for our meeting tomorrow and prepare and teach a class for Writing Salon tomorrow night. All my brain wants to do is be on vacation and digest the huge new turns my life is taking...but it's probably good to have to focus on work.