Somewhere in her time are ashrams, temples, and merfolk,
the peaked-eared, jungle, and long stretches of sand.
Katie's great great gramps, Thaddeus Deitz, as young green preacher, hiked a 120-mile loop from revival to revival in the mountains of North Carolina, communing with trees to the roll of his feet.
He'd stand in the shadows till he was nudged up to speak.
My, could he throw down The Word!
Katie stared into her mother's eyes her first evening on the planet and mom is sure she stared all the way to her soul.
As a kid, Kate wished to be an actress, an interior decorator, or the host of Reading Rainbow, and she usually chose devil or gypsy for Halloween. Around 11, she yearned to return to the moon.
Ma 'n Pa threw spiderweb birthday parties where each child followed her string, winding it on a stick as she went, to find her gift at the end, bumping into and tangling with other partiers and strings along the way. One year, Kate celebrated with a solo string through the woods and found a winged unicorn at the end.
She remembers camping, fire circle songs, coleman stoves, flannel and wool, wet tents, spades, charades, a four-forked tree that held her safe, the two ducks that returned to the pond each year, her duck, Puddles, she hatched in an incubator, salamander-catching, coves, canoes, lilypad fights on surfboards, Ramona books, imaginary friends, a welling up of homesickness every now and then, a lump in her throat and gut, feeling out of place and time, even in her room at home.
Anne of Green Gables, Adopted Jane, Pippi Longstocking, Understood Betsy, Daddy Longlegs, lots of stories of orphans-- The veil in Emily Climbs sometimes lifted for Kate when she walked through the woods or sat in church alone. She nearly choked on a quarter in church once when mom was reading a letter from Paul to the Corinthians at the pulpit.
When Kate was 10, her brother, Joe, came home from his first philosophy course and told her that maybe she was just a brain in a box in a big warehouse full of other brains in boxes and each one of those brains created absolutely every bit of the reality it perceived. After that, she found it hard to pay attention in church.
Katie performed for the dark windows in her room, playing every character in Les Misarables, Godspell, Hair, Little Shop of Horrors. She believed in Santa till she was 12.
Grace lived in a bus shaped like a whale, poured a cobb floor, built forts, made a backpack with sticks, rope, duct tape, and patches, sewed hats and capes, stumbled through mistakes, forgave, and was forgiven.
She viewed and imbued Vedavu, Mesa Verde, the Badlands, geysers, redwoods, pueblos, casinos, cliff-dwellings, teen magizines, bulemia, anorexia, prozac, beer, commercials, mtv ...somewhere in time she'd find that creativity could sieve her emotional sea, merge reality with make-believe.
Apple, Eve, Snake, retrieving memories from school's alternative text, discovering the androgyne within, beneath hoodies and headphones, laying long loping tracks down London and NYC streets, spacy and lost in her fantasies, yet urgent, seeking....
Her best writing came on scraps, in transit, sitting in trees or trains, or underground.
She wore traveler's cap, shuffled magic cards, navigated canals, labyrinths, tunnels, the Anne Frank house. She communed with a caravan of dejected clowns in Ireland's Dingle Bay, busquing, face painted, with fellow freaks in the subways.
In joy and longing she grew,
and somewhere in time, she finds balance of two
within
0-the fool- travel-bumbling boy, not gripping or latched, trusting cross-currents of witch's breath to lead him along to fruit and the silence....
1- eternity- tiny free girl on a fraying lotus blossom, kamikazzying out onto purple expanse for a smooth plum ally ride with groove, hot brimstone, a wrinkle in time, jive.
Before words came through Grace with meaning, they laughed, whooped, and rolled on the floor, refusing to be polite or make sense.
Same goes for life she'd guess....
these may be times of chaos, but they are also times of high creativity.
let's remember we are star seed...
