pilgrimage

happy thanksgiving from 1980!

can you see me? i’m the one smiling.

going home is a bit like peeling back the years, turning me into the child i haven’t been since i left home sixteen years ago. i certainly didn’t think of myself as a child then, but i do now.

tomorrow i’m getting on a plane with my son and his 104 degree fever and we are flying east. right now while the house is dark and my bags are packed, a song plays through my head. one line in particular: “Load the car and write the note. Grab your bag and grab your coat. Tell the ones that need to know. We are headed north.” 

i’m not even sure what i’ll find there. what i expect or can’t believe until i see with my own eyes. the passage of time witnessed with fresh eyes. alot can happen in a year and i think i’ll be surprised by what i find there at the edge of the coast where the wind whips my hair and the sand sticks to my shoes.

i need that space. the space that only the coastline can offer. because when you stand there you can see forever. and all lost hopes and dreams, the should’ve the could’ve, the lost years and memories that continue to slip away… they are at your back. they allow themselves to be set down there in the sand while you step away and catch your breath, when you look out to the sea.

it’s true, i gather strength at the coast.

so, goodbye for now. i’ll be back in about a week, taking my time to shake the sand from our clothes while i process the stories i collected from the edge of the world.

Don’t go. Don’t stay.
Daughter. Morning after afternoon
the last year slips away.

 

Singing all the old songs, you will go
(ambivalence of moon, certainty of sun)
we know

only half of what we are.
The earth is earth to us, star
perhaps

if apprehended far enough away.
Daughter –

 

don’t go.
Don’t stay.

‘To A High School Senior’
by Pat Schneider

flying

I wish that you could see me when I’m flying in my dreams
The way I laugh there way up high
The way I look when I fly
The way I live
The way I fly

i was a bird in my dreams, flying always flying. stopping to perch on wires, sit on fences, hang from my hands from lightposts… because in reality i was just a little girl. 

flying dreams were my escape. they were my way out of body, my way to catch air, experience free fall, taste freedom.

i woke one morning with the fresh colors in my mind, the edge of land and sea, the wind still in my hair, sand on my feet as i lifted off straight up off the beach into blue sky. i was four. and it was the first dream i ever remember having.

i’ve been trying to find my way back to that take off ever since.

I don’t really know what I’m doing
Just watching myself in some play
And the actress looks like she wants to go home
And lie in bed all day
Yeah lie in a big bed all day

~ Chief by Patty Griffin

x-ray vision

he told me about a picture he saw at school. “it was an x-ray.” i think of him so little in his hospital gown worried that i couldn’t be in the room with him as they looked at his lungs with x-ray vision.

“it was an x-ray of a heart that was broken, momma. it had a big crack in the middle of it.”

silence.

“can a heart break, momma?”

i lie.
i say no.
“it’s not possible for a heart to break like that.”

not like that anyways, i think to myself. not a cartoonish zigzag line breaking solid pieces in two. one day i imagine he’ll remember that i lied to him when he feels that pain. it will feel like it’s broken. and that it won’t ever feel whole again.

but it heals. i’m not sure how. it’s not like we are salty starfish able to grow more legs. but a heart mends and somehow grows bigger because of the break.

and this time i won’t be lying.

just be

we don’t give ourselves enough credit. the power we carry in our minds to create, draw, pull something into existence… as if from mid air.

it’s wonderful. magical.

harness that energy. roll it gently. shape it into what you most desire. i think you’ll be surprised by the universe’s response when you call out to it.

from what i know, it echoes back love.

this morning two worlds collided. i love it when that happens. it causes a spark in my mind, leaving me scrambling for a pen and paper. for me the catalyst is most always sound and font. 

i’m was reading (and wondering) about this time next year. wondering, wondering, always wondering. what will i dream of when i have my life by the coast?

and what i hear? it’s peace and deep inhales setting worry aside leaving room for all the trees of the field to clap their hands.

walk with me, will you? two women, kristin and dani (i’m blessed to call them friends) were the creative genius behind this concept. read about the love and then be sure to click on this little slideshow button (below) to journey with me down to our favorite creek.

view slideshow

frog prince

i was the girl hiding in the trees. branches became rooms in the most beautiful house i could imagine. for years, i’d come home with pine sap on my jeans and rhododendron leaves tangled in my hair.

we both stopped in mid-stride when we saw it there, seemingly growing straight out of the dry ground. it was mighty and strong and amazing to watch. his voice was deep and thoughtful. he hugged with branches and walked on trunks. we were mesmorized, both myself and my son.

i haven’t felt that kind of magic since i was a kid. and so because of it, we walked up together to this magnificent tree, just to get close to him, to breathe in some of that magic. he looked down at us with deeply set eyes and spoke his slow greeting. i became a 34 year old little girl thinking of nothing else to say other than “you are beautiful.”

and so that is what i said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

on monday i caught a frog. it moved at my feet in the dewy clover. i knelt down to find him hiding. he jumped from my hands twice before settling into the safety of my open palm.

he peered up at me with big eyes on a tiny body. his heart racing out of his skin. after awhile we just sat there staring at each other. he at me, and me at him. i laughed outloud because i haven’t caught a frog since i was ankle deep in a new jersey creek. i grew up in that creek with g.i. joes and lego damns to make lagoons for rock sitting mermaids. i left my childhood there on the banks of that creek. i think it’s waiting for me still.

i let him go in the clover and he hopped away on springy legs never once looking back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Got Prayer?” their signs ask me while i am stopped at a red light about to turn into the market. do i have prayer? not in your traditional sense. i wave anyway, simply because they’re out there like petitioners for hope and faith and belief.

and so am i, in my own way. catching frogs and letting them go. asking them to spread the word that i believe. because i still do. and if that is a prayer, then so be it. and if that is hope, then better yet. “tell your friends” i whispered, “i let you go because i am looking for a man named truth.”

 

 

vortex

“she was weeping over the end of a cycle. how one must be thrust out of a finished cycle in life and that leap the most difficult to make, to part with one’s faith, one’s love, when one would prefer to renew the faith and recreate the passion.  

the struggle to emerge out of the past, clean of memories; the inadequacy of our hearts to cut life into separate and final portions; the pain of this constant ambivalence and interrelation of emotions; the hunger for frontiers against which we might lean as upon closed doors before we proceed forward; the struggle against diffusion, new beginnings, against finality in acts without finality or end, in our cursedly repercussive being…”

~ Anais Nin

home sweet…

“It turns out that the drain pipe from the sink is attached to nothing and water just runs right onto the ground in the crawl space underneath the house and then trickles out into the stream that passes through the backyard.

It turns out that the house is not really attached to the ground but
sits atop a few loose concrete blocks all held in place by gravity, which, as I understand it, means “seriousness.”

Well, this is serious enough.

If you look into it further you will discover that the water is not attached to anything either and that perhaps the rocks and the trees are not all that
firmly in place.

The world is a stage.

But don’t try to move anything. You might hurt yourself, besides that’s a job for the stagehands and union rules are strict. You are merely a player about to deliver a soliloquy on the septic system to a couple dozen popple trees and a patch of pale blue sky. “

~ Gravity  by Louis Jenkins

this place i am is lush with all its greenery. it is joyous. this is the place i found when i needed it most. this is the place i landed after jumping. this place i will not forget.

the cedar trees with shaggy bark grow crooked out of thickly decadent grass. the views, the space, the tree house balconies. i have come to call this place home. see? i said it. and it sounds awkward as it crumbles off my lips. home is a perception, it slithers away the minute i try to pin it down. this is me, the gypsy. this is me never living anywhere longer than eight years.

home is sweet. home is…

this is not a place of permanence. i know this now. when she handed me the keys she told me this. home is a place to rest, to catch your breath. this is my between place. she somehow knew this, maybe it was in my eyes. the keys jingled in my hands as she said “you never know what will happen.”

i am staying present in this place of impermanence. i am bowing down, grateful for what it brings me, and for what i have brought myself because of it. so, when it asks me to lie down for a moment and enjoy the green, i do.

because home is sweet.