This week, I’m heading out of Ojai! I was planning to leave today but my car’s getting fixed, so I’ll need to leave tomorrow instead.

The first place I’m heading Is LA, to visit my dad for a week or so.

The week after that I’m assisting a poetry workshop at Esalen. YAY!

Then I’ll be returning to socal, probably to Orange County for a friend visit, and then hopefully San Diego to a retreat center in the desert, then… who knows!

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I’m looking for teachers who are unique and remarkable to interview for my book. If you know someone you think I should see, let me know!

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I don’t put other people’s poems up here too often, but Mary Oliver’s poem The Journey has been in my brain (and if you don’t already know it, you’ll see why):

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.