Permaculture Voices 2: San Diego

A couple of highlights, for now. This week was amazing. I live tweeted as much as I could. It was kind of hilarious when a speaker gave me side eye for using my iPhone while she was speaking....I was live tweeting all her key points! Ha.

I'll write more about the conference when I stop running, tomorrow early I catch a train that runs the coast to Los Angeles.

For now? Pictures of the bay that the hotel was right on.

Permaculture Voices 2 Day One

Settled in after a 5 am flight and near doom (standby ticket in Chicago- why my ticket was so cheap) midway, we headed to the first night keynotes for the conference. The conference being Permaculture Voices, connected to a podcast of the same name that interviewed Chad last year about quitting his job.

Overload.....in San Diego

We arrive around lunch time, after a 5am flight. I barely escaped the drama of having a standby ticket from the Chicago to CA leg of the trip. No wonder it was so cheap!

We arrived, checked in, and headed straight for food and conference name tags. Soon we were swept away in the introductions, the welcome speech, a World Cafe exercise, and ...... I crashed. The keynote hadn't even happened yet. Chad nodded to me and I slipped out the doors and took off back to the main hotel. Too much. Too much.

Regrouping now. No wifi and my data plan which has another 20 days on it sent me a usage exceeds warning. We will get this figured out, but first I need tea and to wash my hair.

Hopefully I can rejoin the festivities later tonight.

Every Breaking Wave

I don't fall in love easily. I just don't. I didn't return the verbal sentiment to Chad when he first blurted it out and even then I had to start by saying it in French. Words are important to me and they make things real.

When I say that I feel like I am falling in love again, with poetry? I am not surprised that it took me a year, and a bit, to get to this point. I recognise and am cautious of lust and passion, because those things feel out of control to me. Fleeting. My feet need to be on the ground, a steady footing. Not necessarily a well worn path, I have no problem with climbing through brambles and thorns and exploring the darker parts of the wild, but do not unground me or put me out to sea.

That is why the ocean scares me so much. The rushing, powerful waves, the music, the rage and power that ebbs and recedes. This is pure and utter terror to me. Fist clenching, dizzy, panic inducing terror.

This is what falling in love with poetry feels like. Again. Feels like standing on that sandy beach with high tide rolling in, storms on the horizon.

I hope now that I have a few more decades on me that I can handle it this time around and not turn and run from it. I think I may have a handle on how to write the monsters this time around, bring them to life in ways that can't hurt me. If I am wrong? I'm much better with a sword now than at seventeen. The rules have changed.