moments

A moment that invites you to feel as though someone has taken a box full of all you know and a box full of all that you do not want to admit and turned them over on to a table and said, "Make sense of this. Now."

A moment (or two) spent wondering what home really is and really means and why it sometimes feels like I am someone searching for home instead of seeing the home I already have.

A moment that feels as though someone holds up a mirror facing me and says, "Look. No. Really look."

A few moments I have experienced lately.

I have been a traveler walking through truth, wonderment, joy, and pain. I have been visiting the past while sitting in the present.

I have felt as though I am becoming a bit worn in a few places as if I am on a trip seeking the lessons of the wise skin horse.

And this is what it is…life. This is what real is. This is what I am to do. This is doing.

I hear the whispers of truth, "you are on your path."

But it has been a bit uncentering as this kind of traveling can be and I have felt a bit like I am up on the tightrope holding my own and someone suddenly turns off the lights in the big top. My only option? Breathe and be patient.

So that is what I have been attempting to do.

And, tonight, the lights were raised by a little music I hadn't listened to in years paired with the rhythm of moving the scissors at the cutting table.

As I sung along with Alabama and Randy Travis then George Strait and finally Ronnie Milsap, I realized that these men sing part of the soundtrack of my life. I was transported to the many trips I have made from Indiana to South Carolina and back. I found myself:

In the middle front seat of a white Bonneville singing "40 Hour Week" with my mother and cousins as we tried to find every letter of the alphabet in the signs along the Kentucky interstate.

Spotting the mountains of Tennessee and turning up "Smokey Mountain Rain" so my mother and I could sing along as my brother groaned and turned up his walkman in the backseat.

Driving alone to my grandparents' house for the first time as George Strait kept me company singing "The Fireman" and "I Cross My Heart."

Tonight, singing these songs and remembering the goodness in the past, I found my footing.

As I turned the music off and then the lights in the little room, I realized that I felt grounded in the joy and beauty of the little moments that make up this life…in the moments that make up my life.

I am blessed.

home

The return

You are
the sliver of blue behind the grey
the yellow stripe on the crocus
the pungent plum tree blossoms
the insistent call of the plump chickadee
the arching green tulip leaves

Today,
I whisper prayers of gratitude
to Spring
as she awakens
and brings
you

postcard from chicago

Front:
A pedestrian sidewalk eye looking up view of the black steel-striped window-lined John Hancock Building.

Back:
I think and I think and I think, think, think, think.
And I breathe (for a moment).
Then, I think and I think and I try to sit in the quiet and not.
But I think and I think and I think, think, think, think.
And I breathe in so that I can…
Talk and talk.
And I sit in the quiet and I think.
And, today
As I think, think, think, think
I think that
It is time to quiet.
I think that
It is time to rest.
I think that
It is time to do.

postcard from indiana (two)

Front:
The reaching, soaring Lake Michigan-grey wing of a great blue heron.

Back:
I am pirouetting in midair
I am stillness within the light
I am the harbor of spirit
I am folded into darkness
I am beyond what is known
I am strength
I am wind
I am fragile
I am unburdened

postcard from indiana (one)

Front:
A landscape of snow-filled rows in fields that once held corn and soybeans surrounded by woods full of naked, brown trees with a highway running through it. The setting of the winters of my childhood.

Back:
"I come from / a tiptoeing, still, winter home." A line from a poem I wrote almost a year ago…I have walked back into that line as I traveled by plane and car and foot to all that I used to know. Walking down the roads that led to patterns invites an awareness to why the patterns continue even on a blank page of all that can be. I have allowed the samscaras to create a rhythm that is not inward resonance, but instead has pushed a feeling of off-kilter that has become my life on certain days, in certain moments.

really.

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.

Rachel Naomi Remen

how are you? really. how. are. you?
(let it out.)

five (really) good things. today.

drinking a big glass of fresh-squeezed citrus in anticipation of a plane ride (full of germs)

laughing out loud with a friend on the phone today (can't wait to see you friday!)

looking out my window and seeing a bright blue sky

seeing the tulips get taller each day as they prepare to bloom in a few weeks

folding into child's pose and breathing deeply

*******

what are your five (really) good things?
name them...go ahead...take a moment and think of five...

feeling...

tired tonight. recovering from sunday's migraine complete with dizziness and blotches of wavy blurriness and the echoes of a bit of pain from my wisdom tooth pulling a week ago...

hopeful about a shift in the way i look at certain patterns in my life...being honest with myself about how repeating these patterns hasn't been working and deciding it is time (to try) to be honest with others as well.

happy about new designs that are making there way from paper to three dimensions.

melancholy about how much i miss her...found a picture this weekend that i have often passed by because it just isn't a great picture of me...but she looks beautiful...and i can't believe how healthy she looks...just nine years ago...how did she die six years later? how is it that it has almost been three years...the missing, the ache, will never leave...this is what i know to be true.

excited about an upcoming trip…chicago for the weekend and then indiana the next few days. "home" for the first time in over two years.

quiet about a few things…just needing a bit of space as i shift and push and breathe.

blessed to have friends (a couple near and few far) who get me…who really get me. (thank you)

*******

i guess tonight, i feel like i am gathering up the feelings…the bits and pieces of this life and living it…really living it.

my heart is open as i walk…as i dance…in my life.