Even though I am not Perfect, I deeply accept myself.

The dismissal from the bookstore was a chart topper for blindsighted and busted for me.

This customer was at the coffee-shop before it was even open. I was functioning at a level of sourpuss bitch riding high on her horse at that time that I have since realized is a tendency I need to learn to keep under the hood if at all possible, but at the time, I wasn't really in the mood to be all perky at 7:30 in the morning and this guy was all in my face, and chatting it up with everybody making friends and I wasn't really feeling him, and I was a bitch to him. I just wasn't picking up what he was throwing down, it wasn't funny to me. Whatever, I opened the shop, he left to get doughnuts or whatever, and that was that. I learned from this experience, or at least it is clear to me now, I shouldn't have second guessed those gut instincts to distrust this man. 

A few hours passed and it was just another day, and I was still a smoker at the time, so when another employee came in for coffee, as was common I asked him to watch the shop for me while I went for a cigarette out back. He assented and off I went. The door slammed shut. 

I was smoking, not having a clue about the drastic impact on my life the moment of neglect I demanded for my own momentary comfort would have on my life, on my stability. 

I walked into the shop and the other employee who covered for me left. Then I noticed the hundred dollar bill on the counter. I put the money in the register. I got scared and acted impulsively to try to cover my ass. Boy, did that blow up in my face. Well, it turns out the money belonged to that first customer, who had walked in the front door while I was having a cigarette and played some unfunny joke on the other guy covering for me; the joke hadn't gone over well so he left a $100 bill as a "tip" for the other guy, still catching all this shit during my break, I don't even know whats going on at this point.  The guy just then walks out of the bathroom and starts asking me about this hundred dollar bill. I offer to sell him 100 dollars of books for the money that is already in the register. He assents, brings books to the counter that he wants in exchange for this 100$ that I mistakenly put in the register, and off he goes. A sale, with a misunderstanding that was about to get big. 

I get off my shift and a few hours pass, and then I get a phone call from the other girl who works there, saying the guy is back, trying to return the books. But the bookstore doesn't do returns, and this guy has this crazy story about how you stole his money...can I come down there and clear some things up? So I am on my way down there, already knowing that sinking feeling in my stomach, that this gig that I finally scored is getting lost because I let myself get distracted and they got me again! I got to the shop and I got my friend to lend me $100 to pay this guy off so I didn't have to step over the no returns rule for the washed up, far away boss. I still haven't paid my friend off yet for this debt, and I hate that. That night I got the phone call from the washed up, far away boss telling me I was fired because of "theft". I didn't remember this guy having enough energy to walk to the liquor store so the excitement he exhibited when dismissing me with this really overbearing  like disappointed tone, it was obviously just him getting off on his idea of power of whatever, while really just complying with the other regulars at the coffee-shop who had found my lack of sexual promiscuity discouraging and therefore I was disposable. It was a big disappointment at my own ability to administer order and... I wonder about the implications of the choices from that time alot. I wish I hadn't felt guilty for being a bitch to that customer, and just refused him service from the start. I was not awake enough, I guess-- more focused on my smoke break than keeping my awesome job. Well, the next day, I walked down the street and saw a NOW HIRING sign in a window at another cafe.

When I handed the lady at the counter my resume, she looked deeply into my eyes, and I did my darndest to ignore the unsettled feeling in my middle, as though a ghost was walking through me there, while she looked me up and down with her giant blue eyes. 

I got a clear message from this woman she needed help, and was interested in having mine. I started the next day, not even giving myself a moment to process the undesirable, unfair, and confusing mishap that had led to the jobless and desperate position I had started at. 

This coffee-shop was different, because there were no books. She supplied her banker, lawyer, courthouse and upper echelon of society customers with the New York TImes and Martha Stewart Living. The coffee was much better than that served under the patriarch, ad this was my first position as a baker. 

I learned at this job to make really quality espresso, scones, muffins, cookies and cakes.

The tediousness and intensity of nit-picking and obsessive finicky energy this woman employer directed towards the other employee obviously had taken a toll on their relationship. This other barista who trained me mostly, was a really beautiful woman with a resolve of steel. She had the customer service smile down, pat. She helped me truly learn the methods I would need to get by the employers impossible standards. The lady boss with the intense blue eyes was always taking my work and throwing it away, saying the onions weren't all the same size, or some other extraneous detail weren't to her standards, to justify her storming around the kitchen like a queen with a vendetta to send some heads flying. The other girl who worked the coffee shop would show me step by step how to put together this turkey sandwich for the grab and go, or how to put the granola between the dome and flat lid for the fruit yogurt parfait; a task the employer was never capable of, without the catty repercussions. 

Soon after I started, the other girl left. She obviously hated the employer and warned me to take the tips and make sure my checks were accurately added up. I should have listened to the real message she was sending me, that this job was not worth my time. The boss lady hired a guy from Boston to start in the kitchen.

The summer of 2011 was eventful on a variety of horizons. Occupy was underway, and the Rainbow Gathering was going to be held in Washington nearby at the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. 

We had come to make friends with a family who were traveling a van with their daughter and the mood was ripening for community togetherness. They introduced us to a deepened appreciation of what rainbow family can mean with their powerful, radiant love. 

That was also the summer I met mamadog. The story goes, mama-dog was in east Compton when she first set eyes on my friend, and followed him all the way from there, to nearby when together they also attended the Rainbow. The gathering took place over a large piece of land, and because there were so many people, dogs, and energy, it was important to keep mama-dog at the campsite in order to avoid a scenario in the wilderness with an encounter with a bear or cougar-- what ever's out there. Well, mama was in heat, and there were other campers who didn't want their dogs to get lost or eaten either, and so there were several male dogs, and mama dog. And she got pregnant. The environment was ripe indeed for community feeling. 

I attended that rainbow gathering too, promising the new kitchen guy from Boston and my boss I would return after the 4th of July weekend. My trip to rainbow gathering was with some friends in one of their cars. We all sat snug together in the back of the van during the several hours it took to get there. I remember the feeling of anticipation, like a distant heartbeat, a drum beat that grew louder, and progressively faster, and so full of feeling. I followed that feeling all the way there, a very long voyage, to where that feeling led me-- a giant fire surrounded by a drum circle in the heart of the night of rainbow gathering 2011. It was as though all the way at my house I could hear the drum circle. I still remember it clearly enough, I could say I can hear it now. :)

When we parked, we still had 9 miles to hike up the mountain to the gathering. It was a profound feeling, walking in the company of so many like minded people finding a way to live in harmony. 

I remember we left a note on the community bulletin for our friend we met at the bookstore who said he planned to make it back around this part of the country on a traveling road which he has wandered more ruthlessly than most.  We did end up running into him again, though he was stranded without a ride hitchhiking in northern california, believe it or not-- and he never made it to the rainbow nor got our message of good cheer and encouragement. 

All the people were migrating little by little closer to the center of the gathering. The light was starting to blossom into beautiful colors as the sun sank lower into the trees on our west. As we continued on our path we found ourselves walking at the same pace as two other travellers, a woman and her young adult son. 

She was an incredible connection I made that summer, on the way to the center of the rainbow. :)

We first met on the hike into rainbow, but even in a world as vastly populated as ours, we would cross paths not once, but two more times! 0_0 --She was a magnanimous and immensely charismatic healer and she showed me how to hold herbs, to break them with your fingertips, and that herbs can feel your fingers, that the heat and energy brings out things in the herbs that they are less providing of when a knife is used. This I will never forget. She showed me this when we shared a meal together.

Deeper into the forest we travelled, until after a while every once and again we would see a campsite, where people were and they invited everyone to come and join them-- a full on family reunion-- with everyone you could ever meet.

More camps started sprouting up, and we were digging the good vibes, that drum beat grew louder-- and a big log over a gurgling stream had a headstanding guy. There was this guy who was like, one with this tree. We laughed and talked to him for a while, he was a trip.. It was like the wrinkles in his face just kept going and going.  :) 

The good vibes got intense in waves, like woah! and its all cool right now! with a bunch of strangers!  and then the pocket trades started happening, just getting familiar with all the different campsites and the feeling, I realized of tension, was most likely just me. I felt as though all of a sudden, I was in need of a serious reality check with the level of pressure I carry with myself. And it was apparent that here, in the still part of the pond, kept in balance by the love in the pound of the drum beat that I was one causing resistance and collisions by my own hang ups. I was in a moment where the importance of all the attachments of my life came into a grand, global question. I was hanging on tight to my friends, I was remembering a fear of being lost, and my dreams-- of actualizing a harmony that was sustained. The impossibility was before my eyes uncovered to be a lie--the lie that people can't live together and keep eachother thriving. It was massive. By the time I caught my attention again I was scrambling to try to find a way home on my own because everyone was obviously not planning to leave after the weekend as they had planned at first. 

My friend-- who has challenged the modern bastardizations of what a friend can mean, came with me as I pieced the world as broken as I had known it to be outside, back together with just enough dexterity to find a ride to portland in a blue rhino schoolbus.  But before I caught my attention...

I was beginning to familiarize myself with the common sense applications of communal living. Pocket trade, in depth, is a game that you can play if you have ANYTHING in your pocket. The way you play is by approaching anyone at rainbow gathering and saying, pocket trade-- at which time-- those individuals will or wont pocket trade you. I have been lucky and recieved candy, I gave away my crystals, and I feel good about it.  :) 

There was an old man, white wolf, I met him and spoke with him. I was healed of my distrust of the possibility to bring life into this world, because there are birthing places on this earth that are not traditional or conventional, and that was not available to my awareness before I met him. Well that was a relief. What a sweet relief. :)

I remember the communal meal we shared. It was huge!!! The pots were the biggest pots I have ever seen! And there was a big circle of gratitude and love and respect for the food. We gave peaceful wishes together and ate together. I had to borrow some one's bowl-- thats about how much sense I brought with me-- I didn't remember to pack a bowl to eat from! HAha

The fire, the drum circle, the community sharing a meal, and even conversations that were being engaged by the fellowship of complete strangers. This was an experience I wouldn't leave behind. 

I was still chained psychologically by my obligations to my job-- what a waste. She gave me a paycheck at the end of that month for the 2000 she owed me, I took it to the bank and it bounced like a rubber ball. My credit score is f***ed, and I will never be able to financially recover from that shit. Never. Not unless I win the lottery//// or steem pays me big-- yeah right? lol. 

Anyway. My job, and my landlord-- oh he was a piece of work. Black mold and leaking plumbing that the city was holding me footing the water bill for months, the river in the basement, the way the house swayed when the wind would blow... oh but he was a person of import in my life at that time, of such import-- I drew my attention away from the  communal heart beat. My sense of priority was so stretched, it was so... do or die. I wanted to stay at rainbow forever but my fear of the absence of a plan B for my friend and I to fall back on and the obvious vyers of peoples freedoms that were waiting at the door to imprison him and institutionalize me determined my attention span to return to the faded fluorescent flicker of wage laborer life.

I had a friend nearby who was always a great help to me and we walked together. After waiting a long time for a ride from the entrance to rainbow to where a parking area was, we found the guy with the blue rhino school bus and he was kind and easygoing, with a ride for us. He was a union worker, worked with welding--hence the bus.   Very kind man. no weirdness. at all.  I started getting a crush for his virtue. It was confusing. 

The bus was converted to a living room area with recliners, a table and chairs, and some beds. There was this kid and his mom who were so stressed out because she had first lost her son to the throngs of masses of people, and then by word of mouth, they were reunited. But in that effort, the man who was the boy's father was lost. They were working out their options, if they should go back and wait for him, possibly forfeiting this ride home, or if he could find a way home without his stuff-- that she was holding. We waited, and though the air was dense; the man who was driving the bus-- the one who offered us a ride-- the union guy with the welding shift in the morning he had to get home to-- he agreed to wait some more time, over and over again. 

Somehow, the father had gotten the message to come back to the parking area-- and he walked up to the bus after a long time to the immense relief we all experienced, it was so clear how special family is to keep together.