The list

Over the past few years I'd developed a list of things I wanted to do.  The list included places I wanted to go,  things to see, so much I longed to try, stuff to understand, to accomplish, to experience.  There was much I wanted to give, more to learn, all sorts of things to know about.

I could spend my entire life checking things off my list and as I did this, that list would lengthen infinitely, because as you may have guessed - the more you know the more you want to know.

I would never be without a goal.  I'd never become bored.  I'd never be through.  There would always be more to do.

But a list of things to do is just a piece of paper, something I can hold in my hand.  It's contents can be altered with the mere flick of a pen.  I can erase my desires, scratch them out.   I can alter my choices.  I can tear it up and throw it away or a breeze could simply swipe it from me.   Then all that would remain  would be memories of my experiences; photographs, souvenirs and likely the subtle changes within from the way what I'd endured had affected me.  A few life lessons.  Yet the list seemed monumental until...

I discovered that there might in fact be an "anti-list".  I have, quite by accident, figured out why people make lists in the first place.  

A list of things to do and places to go and things to see is what you need when you have hope.  Hope is what you have before you find the love of your life. 

When you find what fills your heart, it makes full your mind, your body and completes all your desires.

The paper on which a list of things to do is written, makes good kindling for the fire you build while you sit beside the person who diminishes your hope and makes pointless your list.

Ilysrq

Check Please

Leo Tolstoy; "The two most powerful warriors are patience and time".  

I must be one hell of a soldier.  Patience is my middle name.  Actually it's not, but it would be a lovely middle name.  I have nothing sitting between my first and last names.  My folks shirked their duties on that one.

"Patience and fortitude conquer all things", Ralph Waldo Emerson.  He has quite a middle name and he too likens waiting to war.  

I have to ask myself if I am actually  practicing patience when in fact I must seek solace in quotes from smart, dead people to quiet my racing mind and still my pacing body.  

The most patience I have ever  possessed was likely when I had real patients depending on me for every single thing.  Things like simply rolling over or as vital as the pumping of blood and how about air.  Even air.  Imagine that? Imagine requiring assistance breathing and needing someone to help you accomplish it?   If people can wait for oxygen, I suppose I can wait for something I feel is just as necessary to my survival, but others might not agree entirely.   So I won't hold my breath, but I'll try to live up to Emerson and Tolstoy's exaltations and remember the virtues of patience, time and fortitude.

Days like this - - xoxo

Days like this remind me what's good about planet earth. 

Glowing sun shining.
 Warmth spreading over every living thing.
 Air clearing.
Soil softening beneath my feet as I move happily over it.

Birds are chirping, flowers literally opening petal, by petal, by petal.  
 Butterflies flying, worms worming and all the while there is me and I'm smiling, thinking about you.
Smiling thinking about you thinking about me
 being a part of a day like this.

Book-ish Girl

Off the top of my head,

 a few of the best books I've ever read...

A Ship Made of Paper

Into the Wild

Running With Scissors

House of Sand and Fog

I Know This Much is True

A Map of the World

Little Children

The Novel

Lie Down With Lions

The Road

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

Mrs. Kimble

and a line from one of my all time favorites... "You'll move mountains kid", by Dr Seuss; Oh the Places You'll Go.

Don't it make you smile?

outside the lines

Last night my kids colored me pictures.


Girl chose deep colors, pressed hard.  The effect; jewel tones, rich and distinctive.  
Yes she is, I thought to myself.

Boy looped and looped, circles and swirls of barely perceptible yellow, swoops of red, blue, black and varying shades of green.  "What is it?", I dared to question.  "Circles", he responded.   How obvious and how had I missed that?   Then he looked at it a long time with me and said, "I like to go around and around and sometimes I like to color outside the lines.

I too like to go round and round and sometimes I like to color outside the lines as well...

ooO0oo000OOOo

Back in the atmosphere...

A few days down with the flu.  

I never left my house.

Looking back over the past nearly three years that I have been on my own, I can recall 5 day stretches where I didn't  leave the house and there was no flu to pin it on, just me, just myself, just I.  

If you knew me and maybe you do, you'd probably have a hard time believing I can behave in a reclusive manner.  I can.  I have.  I fight it.  Luckily I win, eventually.

Today I fought it and I also battled the urge to shirk a work out.  I knew it would be physically hard, grueling even.  But I did it, not sure why.  I think I went forward partly because I have someone holding me mildly accountable.    A friend is encouraging me to find the true good in a new fitness regimen.   

As I ran today, something I never thought I'd enjoy, I heard a song playing and it made me realize that the main person encouraging me to do this torturous, constant trial of an exercise routine, is... me.

So, I danced along the light of day, headed back to the milky way... or so it felt.

And it was everything I wanted to find and I did miss you while I was looking for myself out there...

Public Nudity

Last night I dreamt that I was naked in public.  The feelings that persisted predominantly in my dream were shamefulness and self consciousness.  I was so profoundly overly aware of my own nakedness, I couldn't wait to wake up and when I did, I put on a robe.  Went back to bed, but not to sleep.  I thought about the dream and it's origin.  Why did I have it?  Do I feel exposed?  Am I uncomfortable?  Nah, I just have the flu and with it come some fevers and some rather screwy dreams, but my contemplativeness did not end there.  I lay in bed, thought back to my youth and my first experience with being naked in public.  

I had this amazing grandparent, my precious Nana.  She was Scottish and her accent was thick as clotted cream, heavy as keifer.   She smelled like English Lavendar and sen sen.   Her skin was velvet and I could loose myself in it's endless folds.  She was an excellent soother and it seemed I often required this from her.   I loved days spent in her old, victorian home, with its black and white tiled entry hall, steep staircase  and the magical coat closet that had, concealed at its rear, a secret door that led to the back hallway of the house.   My mother had promised my brothers and I that we'd go swimming in the afternoon, but something came up and our plans had changed.  I was stranded at my Nana's and desperate to entertain my younger brother.   Wearing just my new pink, eyelet bikini, waiting impatiently for my promised swim, I was all of five years old.  I took my little brother's hand and silently led him out of the impressive hallway to the sidewalk and the bustling city streets that seemed to beckon me.  I was sure it would be simply fine for me to take him on a walk.  I was pretty sure of everything, including my ability to find my way back.  

Lost at 5 years old in a city, not my own, with my younger brother in tow, I felt utterly naked in my tiny bathing suit.  Strangers began to take notice of how out of place we were.  People started to stare at us and eventually a couple with accents unlike my Nana's but almost as impossible to understand, coaxed us into their house.  The police were called and then my mother was somehow, miraculously contacted.  I hadn't even known my grandparents last name.  The stir I caused in my itty bitty bikini was enormous; what a commotion.  I remember then, as night fell and the incident ended and my head hung heavily, how very exposed I felt;  how very naked to the world I was. 

My Nana's soothing skills came in handy that night.  I can almost feel her now as I could then, while sitting on her lap, clinging to her, my arms tied tight round her neck, face pressed so far into her chest, hoping to be lost there forever.   

Is it any wonder I feel a what seems like a bit too lost and somewhat exposed when I where a bikini?