Sometimes you have to...

Chalk everything up to experience....





And run away...


Find Sunshine in places you'd never think to look...

Sometimes,
you just have to
Pretend....

Peace doesn't have to be a Fairytale

Little black cowboy boots, scuffed, the pink and blue embroidered flowers natty and dirty. Good. I didn't want flowers. Jesse James didn't wear bouquets on his toes and neither did this 4 year old. I wanted 'em dirty, and a little too big, so my toes could scrunch when I had to stop in a hurry. I wanted 'em pointy, like the school pencils the big kids carried to school on the first day. I need them that way so I could Kick harder, write my name in the sand in Giant Letters, and squash things on the ground, round and round, until they went splat.

Giant blue blow up pool, tilting just a little bit to the left, so there's a deep, deep end where the water is cooler and my imagination can dive, where I can fall off an innertube backwards and suddenly be scuba diving in a bottomless sea.... three feet and 6 inches under the surface of reality. I know how to pretend. To float. To dream. To make make~believe the best true story that ever happened.

We pile up on the couch and plug in a gazillion cords, punch all the buttons, bop the broken TV on the head a few times and laugh. Grrrrzzzzghaplumph! Dusty ole video rattles in the box below the set and a giant Warning flashes across the screen.....It's starting. The B rated movie at the dirty old, last one standing, Drive in. We scooch the coffee table really close to the couch, because there's really not a lot of floorboard in this old mustang. He lights the mosquito coil and tosses it in the ashtray. I balance the bucket of buttered pop corn on the make believe console and we laugh. Climb into the backseat and pop open the cooler. At intermission we throw popcorn out the window so everyone will look and see the Peace Signs I scribbled with my toes on the fogged up windshield. We laugh and hide under the blankets, 16 again.

"We're broke, but we've never been poor" she whispered, Kissing me on the forehead and handing me the whacked off above the knees vintage prom dress...and the blue suede heels two sizes too big. "Stuff kleenex in the toes, and have a good time tonight, you're Cinderella".

On our way out the door, she made us pose for pictures. She held the little Brownie camera up high, eye level to our smiles and clicked. Over and over again. It never flashed. The make-believe film didn't budge,

but our memories did.
Forever.

Running Away....

Today, I'm pretending. All day. I decided that before I fell asleep last night, so I wouldn't have to wonder about it at all this morning.

I woke up to bedhead hair that's now half way down my waist, make-believe dreadlocks the colors of a drip castle at sunrise. I stood up and stretched, slowly padded through the house, the old cold congoleum covered in cat hair, sudden beach sand on terraza floors. I smiled.

In a little while I'm gonna whip up Bloody Mary's, ice cold and freckled with black pepper and then on the little splintered deck, I'm going to the Tiki Bar...the tinny sound of Rolling Stones dribbling from the little amfm radio will fill the Air....Amps the size of Winnebagos will hang from the sky, and for a little while, there won't be anything at all but the music and the movement and the moment.

When the Sun reaches Noon thirty, blazing, I'll bop over the ring of the blow up pool and fall face first into the ocean....A giant salty tidal pool just my size. When I open my eyes underwater, the coquina will be six inches deep, thousands of teeny tiny shells....a treasure chest under the sea. My little pink float will be a peace kayak, and I'll paddle out of my puddle and down to the river where the water runs up, up, up and away....

At dusk, I'll drape my long flowy girly swirly hippie dress over my head and fall asleep on the hammock, barefeet dangling in the overgrown grass, that for just one night, will be wild sea oats tickling my toes.

I'll dream paisley colored thoughts until the light show in the sky nudges me awake...an electrical parade just for me....

Peace....sometimes we just have to make it happen.....