I'm Still Here

What is it about summer? Even though the academic rhythm no longer moves me, life still seems to morph into something other during the summer. This one was no exception. I've spent the last four months learning to be happy. I've spent the last four months letting go of all that I thought was absolute, discovering that what is ahead can be more beautiful than what is behind.

I've always believed that love cannot be boxed and categorized. This summer, my love came unboxed, shed its categories. My love ran away with me, grabbed me by the hand and ripped me through wild, exquisite terrain, down through valleys and soaring over mountains, basking on dunes of sand and bobbing along the soporific waves of a placid ocean. And I'm catching my breath now. What a ride.

I've learned to be truly okay with myself. I've learned to smile in the mirror, make a sexy face, sing out loud (still working on doing it in public, but give it time). I've learned to hold my pose when the person in front of me is foundering. I've learned to hear the person whom I couldn't hear before.

I no longer feel like I have to know. In fact, the more I learn, the less I know, and the less I know, the more okay I am. I don't feel like I need to voice what I think and feel, and I've been practicing keeping to myself mostly. Hence all the unanswered emails. Soooooo sorry about that. I've just really needed some space. I think I'm almost ready to come back now. A little longer. Thanks for holding me, loves. Thanks for asking. Knowing you're out there and that you care and that you haven't forgotten me ... well, there was a time when that got me out of bed in the morning. More and more, I get me out of bed in the morning, and I'm loving you all more and more as I do.

Since July, I've

seen two fireworks displays
seen four onstage performances
been hiking in an old, old, old forest with a(n old?) friend
read a few books
curled my hair
been paid for my artwork
said no to someone who wanted something from me
held hands
held space
held silence
held a friend
drawn a picture
fallen in love (twice)
decided to become a healer (of a yet-undetermined nature)

skipped through the woods
cried a little with a friend
cried alone a lot less than I used to
been radically, revolutionarily honest
said goodbye to a dear one over Mumm and the Decemberists
agreed to something crazy and spontaneous
let it go
embraced myself
embraced life
embraced grace
slept and slept and slept

I'm pretty sure that God is so much more and so much more loving and so much kinder than we give her credit for being.

I'm back (I hope). Please bear with me, as I learn to talk about the world with new words, with better words, with light and freedom. Please pray for me, because here come the holidays, Lord save us. Please keep holding me, friends. Please keep holding me.

Thanks, K

"Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day … we become seekers." —Peter Matthiessen

Hot

Just Try Not to Smile

Home, Only Sweeter

Whew. What a summer, folks. And what a fall, coming up. I keep starting this blog post and then, realizing that I don't have the mental capacity to write, deleting it. I haven't had much mental capacity lately. As you poor souls whose emails yet go unanswered know all too well.

My house is a mess. It's been a mess for about a month now. I'm slooooooooowly putting it back together, but the chaos of it is seeping into me. I'm not myself when my house is a mess.

A lot of people I love are hurting right now. There are divorce, terminal illness, abuse, dementia, poverty, and exhaustion plaguing people all around me. And this week, my body up and kaput on me, and here I lie, feverish and achy and wheezing, praying that I'm well enough to make the weekend trip I have planned, to visit one friend in prison and watch another friend in a play. How's that for whiplash?

I've taken the plunge, filled out the time-off-request form, made the announcement: late this fall, I'm headed home, to eastern Pennsylvania, to visit my family. And when I say "family," I mean my sister, my best friend from college, and a woman I like to pretend is my mom but isn't, not biologically anyway. When I say "family," I never mean the people to whom I'm related. For the record.

Christmastime in eastern Pennsylvania. Oh. Sweet. Lord. The baggage. Ohhhhhhh, the baggage. We'll be staying in downtown Philly for part of that time. Right in the middle of where soooooo much happened. And then in Easton, where soooooo much more happened. Just, so much. I fear the trip, the place, that it might swallow me. And I love the place too, and long for it with all my intensity, because I fled in such a frenzy, like leaving a play just before the denouement. I never found out how it ended, the life I was living there. The friendships cut off so abruptly that some people still have no idea what happened to me. Some people thought I was dead, can you believe it? I hope no one thinks that now.

I can't wait. I miss these people so much, people who are like extensions of my own soul. People I think about every single day and haven't seen in years. I've never taken a trip like this before, a trip when I only see people who love me. People who didn't abandon me. People to whom I my heart opens freely, to whom I don't wrench it open for obligation or guilt. People who want me. There aren't too many of those, where I come from.

I feel well now. Even when I meet the darkness that swims in my veins, I can still see the light. And still in me it is, that darkness. But it tastes different now, smells different, feels silky on my palate. Where there used to be old, tepid, cheap coffee, there is now dark chocolate. Still dark, but a welcome, worthy darkness. And now to learn what I am, who I am, with the sweetness and the softness. To do that, I'm going back to the place where I was, to feel it around me, to swim in it, and to feel myself in it. I know I must have something to offer to others, to the world, some way that I can reach out, give back, extend. But, Lord knows, I have no idea what or how.

And that's the

Achoo!

That's the

Achoo!

That's the news

Achoo!


Grrrrrr. That's the news from 'round here. I'm spent. I still promise pictures of my creations, when there's a bit more of me to go around. Off to

Achoo!

bed.

Every single one of us

could use some



Also

[Please ignore the picture and just listen to the song; Michael F. doesn't make many videos.]



Don't let it go.

The song on my mind today

is my favorite, and I finally understand why.

And every day, you gaze upon the sunset with such love and intensity. Why, it's almost as if you could only crack the code and you'd finally understand what this all means. But, if you could, do you think you would trade in all the pain and suffering? Ahh, but then you'd miss the beauty of the light upon this earth and the sweetness of the leaving. —Jane Siberry, "Calling All Angels"