I intend to go to the workshop my friend is teaching - he’s here on an artist-residency in our spiritual community and I want to show up in support and to hang in the garden writing with tribe. A student drives a couple of hours to me for us to meet before we carpool to the gathering. She gets here and part of the counsel I offer has her realize that more than anything she needs to be home today. She listens to her body and turns back around. Shaken free of my plan of her as my ride, I discover that my energy, too, is moving in a different direction. My greatest excitement has me staying right where I am. I feel a quality of pristine, a state of elevation in my being that I want to nurture and tend well. I feel oddly protective of myself. I'm clear it’s not time to show up til later tonight when we are making community ritual, but I’m worried about bailing. My friend has been visioning this workshop for a while and I said I’d come. I want to honor my word and his great work, I don't want to disappoint him, what if he thinks I don't value him. My stress around not hurting my friend has shifted my glow into a state of physical exhaustion. My body literally keeps me on my floor - now I couldn’t go even if I wanted to. After a while a wave of panic / intense energy kicks in. What is going on????

A day of ceremony with dear ones in town from afar. Laying on the sweet earth where Baba is buried, the fragrance of the Beloved becomes my body. Laying in a hammock amidst redwood forest gardens, my student who is my teacher sings one of my songs with way more soul than I've ever sung it. Laying on an enormous sheepskin in front of an epic altar in an eco-palace I met an hour ago and which is now mine for an evening alone, I play a breath-instrument and read spiritual memoir. Laying on each other in the car en route back, we weave stories of becoming. When we stop, we are gifted a bushel of fresh harvested tomatoes and eggplants and peppers and every other nightshade there is. When we return to my home, we make more ceremony still. When I close my eyes I sleep as if it were for days. When I open them in the light it is to texts that my corset is still in their car and that the dream continues into this new day.

Heading home from my first test-drive, I notice a slip of paper with a hand-written note tucked under the windshield wipers of my borrowed car. Oh no, I think, what if someone swiped the car or I did damage to their car or some other wrong thing. I pull over to see that it says: "Your New Friend," with a number and name, in handwriting that feels like a smiley face. I'm walking in the world on very little sleep, but apparently that isn't affecting the mojo in the least.

By the time I'm home, I forget about the note and when I see it again, I intend to throw it away. Then I remember my commitment to synchronicity. The note has whimsy and intrigue and is way more appealing than the more forward notes with numbers that have been left under my wipers before. I never considered responding to those, but this time I pull out my phone ...

I speak too soon. My car is considered totaled. Beloved chariot, freedomobile, done. I go into a bit of shock, safety net stretched, shaky as if the impact of the fender-bender just hit me. The strands that this particular vehicle tie me to need tending, this car may be an offering up. Another chariot awaits on my street, parked there by a sister while she travels. I get in, heading in the direction of dealers. Deep-tissue work first, thank goddess for the $20/hr walk-in magician who tends me so well. The spa is nestled among a handful of used car lots. With no idea what I want, except top-down and sturdy, I make my way.

I'm wearing leopard-print pants and no shoes and remember vaguely that some people make efforts to present themselves a certain kind of way to buy a car. Fk that.

Part 3: The claims adjuster is rocking a rose in her hair & funky boots & draws all sorts of beautiful orange lines on my car. I want to dance with her. I decide to leave my car, but wonder how I will get home. Poof! Friends appear from every direction - one car heading to Holy Hill and the other getting tweaked by Geico too. We party on the street. S & D & I vision deep & literal magic for the new year & beyond at Starr-King, D gives me a copy of next week's schedule which I needed, Sofia & I make a date to Afro-Brazilian dance. R swoops me to lunch which we eat under a fresco of the Mother & surrounded by firemen wearing full gear and faint-worthy smiles. There is a message in chalk on the side-walk that says Maple Syrup doesn't freeze at any temperature, try it! We aren't sure if we are at Burning Man or in Berkeley. The day is just beginning. #witchesatgeico #thirdway

Last night after soup-goodness and kind words from many of you, I feel less shaky and realize what I want next is a turmeric smoothie and connection. I walk into the parking lot toward my well-functioning but bumper-fked-up vehicle. A car pulls up across from me, window rolled down. A man with a groomed goatee, forearms that ripple just right and a warm twinkle in his eyes asks me in a quiet voice something about marriage. "What's that?" I say, though I'm pretty sure I heard him. He fumbles his way through various iterations of "Do you want to get married?" They start more personal - Do I want to marry him, and end up by the third or fourth try more like Do I believe in marriage. I'm amused - this is the second marriage proposal as conversation-starter I've received from a car window in the past ten days.

A part of me really wanted to go to Burning Man next week, even though I knew it wasn't aligned. My specific desire was for corsets & synchronicity. I made clear intent to embrace these things at home instead, and said no to multiple tickets offered me, with a vague sense that if I passed on them, that $ would be spent in a much less delicious way having to do with my car.

On my way home from the farmers market today - dahlias and massage - I somehow stopped paying good attention, no phone involved, and strongly hit the car in front of me. The driver got out, as did his back-seat passenger, an elder blind man. All seemed well except my bumper and the back-seat man who was understandably upset, concerned that he'd have whiplash. We took lots of time exchanging info.

When the back-seat man gave his name I recognized it as Russian Jewish and said Oh, I know folks with that last name. He was confused - its not a common name. Turns out he is a dear cousin of former congregants of mine. Three generations of them attended High Holiday and Shabbat services regularly with me for a decade in the DC area. I was blessed to lead a re-burial ceremony for their great-grandmothers, funerals for both grandfathers who I knew and so enjoyed, including the patriarch of the family - a phenomenal human who was an intellectual/activist/organizer imprisoned in Siberia during the revolution - and bar/bat mitzvahs for the two grandkids and most of their closest friends. I remember clearly when the granddaughter got her first blood.

I am so glad to meet this person in the family of those who became my extended family, and who lives only a mile from me. I haven't known so well how to weave what was with what is. This moment reminds me yet again how much is woven beyond my perception, in right time. My desire for serious bass & sensory magic has been replaced by a need for soup and sweet contact, hopes for a tea date with this man who I rear-ended, a sense of continued wow at the mystery and great gratitude to the Weaver.