what it means December 27, 2006

I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine.~John Muir~

As I begin to really prepare for leaving again, I think about what it means to be a friend.

next December 25, 2006

Not cold, not white,

not the spicy scent of nostalgia

but it is

and because it is

I find a way to embrace the day

though I’ve long forgotten what it used to be

and have yet to decide what it will be next

come back December 22, 2006

Let me tell you now, child, the trick to beauty is that you really have to see something, for all it is and was and ever can be. You see, nothing is ever confined to the limits your knowledge and language want to impose. Nothing is anything, just as anything is anything else. Think about that while you hold your breath waiting for the worst of it to be over, blind yet suffused with wonder. And when you really see, come back and tell me how beautiful it really is.

empty assurances December 18, 2006

I am better off without you

Despite the maddening velocity of my love for you

Despite all the times I swore you were the one that held me together

Despite not knowing back then I’d leave on a very average day & feel

no guilt, no remorse, no sadness

at all

Despite wanting to have had you in my life forever once upon a time

Despite your empty assurances that lied in the face of your love for me

I’m better off without you

a dreamer December 13, 2006

Yet I believed in good

with no proof

No hard facts able to stand

up in court

under laws such godless

creatures signed

But what is proof to a believer

And does skepticism ever

fluff anyone’s pillows at night

for perhaps I am a dreamer

A heretic

A clown with a handful of masks

But I loved with my eyes

closed & my heart open

And a madness called trust came  in

and swept my floors

lover or lollipop December 11, 2006

You may have known me

by so many names or no names at all

but I am in your

bedroom and your car

and in the still clear lake

in the mountains of your heart

So you can call me lover or

lollipop. You can change

your name so that it envelops mine

You can look for it

or hide it

Either way, here I am

Speaking your name on the

wind without lips

or voice, yet you hear it

as if your heart speaks through the blood of my veins

all one December 4, 2006

It’s my 30th birthday today and I am the luckiest girl in the world.

I truly am. I have so much love coming at me from all corners of the world and I have so much gratitude for the people in my life, I am almost without words.

Almost.

I can say this, wherever this road shall lead me into the future, the past three decades have taught me this:

We never really know how we touch each other’s lives. But each of us does. Often and with lasting effect.

If I can do one thing in this life, I want to be a force that helps to connect us again with the heart that makes us human. If we are brave enough to feel, we are close enough to the part in each of us that is the same in all of us and that will save us better than anything I can otherwise imagine.

Home is where you feel like your best self.

Love is unique and there is no contest and no rules.

Surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you.

When you are happy, the whole world is a winner: be what makes you happy.

And finally, and I cannot emphasize this enough: you are beautiful when you laugh.

memory of December 2, 2006

Goodbye. You’ll feel me leaving now.

Soon,

but a wisp of the air I hath breathed

will circulate and disappear. Not

unlike me,

who disappears with it.

This will not turn into longing.

There is no room for regret–I will not be the memory you hold tight to.

These are clean breaks Right through bone.

There will be no memory of this.