the calm before the storm. why do i feel this way? i did look at the moon on the bike ride home from cactus today, and it's nearing full...that could be part of it. but, no, it's more. something is about to shift in a significant way...

these days are shaping up to be a practice in being content with what is. exploring the world and people and opportunities around me with a grounded curiosity. focusing not on what i want to get, rather seeing what evolves when i give myself fully (always a work in progress, that skill) to the moments and the people in them. asking what is needed rather than offering more of what's already plentiful. accepting graces when they're offered and paying them forward in a steady flow...

some philosophies fuel belief in the self,
constructed to keep one's goods on one's own shelf.
built well, you're a strong letter I,
with your feet on the ground and hands to the sky.
now and then you can bend,
it's okay to lean over my way.
you fear that you can't do it all,
and you're right.
and day takes relief every day
from its work making light from the night.

and when you're holding me
we make a pair of parentheses.
there's plenty of space to encase
whatever weird way my mind goes,
I know I’ll be safe in these arms.

if something in the deli aisle makes you cry
  of course I’ll put my arm around you
and I’ll walk you outside,
through the sliding doors,
why would I mind?

you're not a baby if you feel the world.
all of the babies, they can feel the world. that's why they cry.

-the blow (parentheses)

have you ever thought about how life is just one big everlasting gobstopper? hard and sweet...the more vigorously you pursue it, the more rapidly you come across new colors, new experiences, new flavors...

'integrity takes long, thoughtful walks. when she comes home, her pockets are full of stones and shells and feathers. she is the daughter of a weaver, and she has inherited her mother's sense of texture and color, though she prefers the potters wheel to the loom. she makes ritual vessels for the local temple. it was through working with clay that integrity grew to understand that the body is also a vessel, beautiful, sturdy, empty and sacred. integrity loves the intersection where sculpture becomes dance. she has a supple spine and lovely muscles. she knows sign language and has often worked as an interpreter. when she speaks with her hands, it is not in grand, dramatic gestures but in soft, subtle movements. watching her hands dance, we hear stories that we have no words for.'

i dug. we dug. fingers wet and dirtied with the mulch we pushed aside in the darkness, under the light of a partial moon. layers of dust and dirt accumulated over the hundreds of hours that passed so slowly and so painfully at times...layers covering a once-was, my history, the past. we dug and we dug. and found no sign of the weight that i'd left there, in that space, under that tall tree. the burden that i deposited there months ago on that wet december evening, winds and rain whipping across my face, gone. gone. what was broken, healing.

'...if I'm sewn into submission, I can still come home to this...' 

-LCD Soundsystem

late night, heavy panniers giving weight to my freedom ride. but still not weighing it down...nothing can weigh this journey down.