i returned from a retreat to oregon only four days ago.  i had an amazing time.  i bonded with my girls, the ocean, and the trees.  i cried for the beauty.  i cry too often.  the Love overwhelmed me there.  i drank good wine, great beer, and wallowed in joy.  i stared into my soul.  i stared at the coast range.  i stared into the sun.  i waded into the pacific ocean and cried.  i saw Loved ones huddled near a beach fire and laughed.  i felt all emotion.  i drank deep from oregons cup.  i left nothing empty.  i smoked with friends and told stories and entangled hearts and felt in Love again.  i learned that when i moved to oregon to fall in Love, well, i did.  i fell in Love with her, with oregon.  and i miss her.  i miss the misty rain and the pine trees and the feel.  i miss the general wetness.  i am like a nun, i discovered… but i am married to oregon; to home; to my true north(west).  i saw valleys and tress and lots of lady Love and Lovely old(er) hippies.  i smoked, and drank, and smiled again… were old seahags, man, we cant really ever win.  but what i learned is what im learning how to figure out… im always one step away from crazy… i know at any time i could lose my shit and find myself in deep depression or hearing a million voices.  i could need medicine or therapy.  i could need anything.  but when im there, when im with oregon, i dont need it.  she keeps me sane.  she is my one true Love.  and i can no longer deny it and i cant tell lies about her or how happy she makes my heart.  and if i end up single after all these years, thats okay with me.  and thats what i learned.  oregon is my Lover.  and if anyone tries to cross us, watch out!  we are unfaltering.  and we will be back together soon.  and other than that,i dont care what anyone thinks… it is how i feel… and i know just the honey to move back with me…

i have been thinking for months about what it is i should write here.  i am still unsure.  all i know is that i am closer to being ready.  closer to being back to myself.  and closer to being ready to tell all the stories about it.  right now, well, im on the lookout for words…

it has been one week since paul left our home.  the first few days i ignored it.  since then it has set in.  heavy.  it is a good heavy, though… the kind of drop in your belly you get from a roller coaster or when a plane takes off.  i have spent days cleaning and rearranging the home.  i have not slept in the bed in weeks.  i do not intend to until i get my new sheets that i ordered.  they should be here any day.  i look forward to the change.  i am looking forward to many things right now.  it has been so long now since i have felt like myself; felt like doing things for myself… and now i do.  and it is truly amazing.  i feel like the light inside of me got turned back on again and i walk around with a silly grin on my face each day.  i just feel glad at this moment.  and i am trying to breathe deeply and remember exactly how every second of this feels.  it feels nice.  and right now, it is all i could ask for.  how interesting to be back in this place after four years together… and here it all is apart.  the thing is, i thought i would mind… but i honestly dont.  its just… pleasant.

today is the first day of the rest of my life.  i am taking a deep breath and looking forward.  i am looking forward to all of the new experiences i will have and even looking forward to the parts of my every day that i will have to relearn.  i am looking forward to delving back into myself.  i cannot wait to become reacquainted…

dear universe:

lately i feel you have been collapsing down around me.  here i am, all excited and feeling good about some decisions i have been making and then, BOOM!, you hit me hard and knock me down to the ground.  i only now am starting to catch my breath.  that fall really knocked the air straight out of me.  i am wallowing and do not want to be.  i want to feel normal.  i want to feel solid.  you have taken paul, and instead of making him less a part of my life (i thought i had made clear that was what i wanted), you put him right back there in the center… let him lay casually in our bed while i sleep on the couch and force me to watch him waste away in my home.  i cant take it.  i cannot take it.  i know everything will be fine and i just have to be strong and breathe through it, but it is hard right now, and i needed you to know. 

in other news, i am so elated that you let the stars align for one of my dearest, oldest friends, and gave to her and her family the blessing they have been awaiting for so long.  i am elated for them and for the sheer hopefulness of the entire situation.  i am reeling inside with the joy you have given them in the special news, and how happy i am that everything is looking up in that area.

finally, even with the constant curveballs you have been throwing at me, help me stay strong and convicted in the plans i have laid and the goals i have set out to achieve.  i need your backing… i need to know that i am doing all the right things, even in light of deterrents, like crying at work the other day over the dumbest thing (how could you let me do that, how could you?).  i need to feel like some power out there in the cosmos is keeping me in check.  just help me make sure i am aligning all my forces on the right front.  keep me steady.  because even a light wind right now might push me over… and know just how badly i want to stand.

id like to figure it out

with you– (id like

to cease spinning) and

id like you to cushion

my falls.

id like to quit talking

in circles

(enciting equilibrium).

id like to balance it out

with you and

inspire our own

passionate vertigo.

i wrote that poem a little over a year ago.  i never imagined that the poem would somehow mean something different to me an entire year later.  the sadness has washed over this poem, because i have finally realized that you cannot coerce someone… you cannot create a fiery, beautiful Love story when the Love has simply evaporated… and left behind only after-thoughts and wouldas and shouldas and water marks.  i am sure that one day i will dance again and someone will be able to create instability in my earth and when i feel unsteady their Love will catch me without stigma; without jealousy; without ill-will… and then i will write more beautiful poems and the sad ones simply wont seems so sad…

today the rain outside (the cool, misty-type rain) reminds me of winter in oregon.  and the clean-ness of the air and the way it smells when i breathe deep makes me think so many things.  today my life feels like it is changing.  and though i cant be quite sure at this juncture… i feel like its for the best…

this is a strange time of year… here in indiana it is so depressing to me.  i have always disliked the winter and the way the beautiful blanket of pure white snow eventually turns slush grey from traffic and sand and general gunk.  it is an odd time where the geese start being seen and i remember years ago living in bloomington and thinking about how the slate sky and the slushy old snow and the limestone buildings all seemed to blend into one grey mass of blah and the season that is winter swallowed me alive and would not spit me back out until flurries turned back into warm rain showers and the tulips and poppies started showing their green buds and i could finally breathe deep again because it was spring.  winter in the pacific northwest is unexplicably beautiful.  i fell so deeply in Love with winter there that i often turn my thoughts back to my favorite season on the west coast… everything in the winter came alive.  the pine trees looked a deeper green.  the moss that would pop out on roadsides and over logs and branches of deciduous trees was thick and lemon-lime colored.  the air was so fresh all the time… the rain made everything shimmer with special light.  the morning dew was crystal clear and made my lawn look like a tiny ocean… all the droplets frozen in a moment of time.  there was something about winter there.  the few occasions it did snow i would walk around my neighborhood and let the flakes fall over me.  i felt like a child with the clean white hitting my eyelids, my fingers, my hair.  there was never enough snow to get slush grey and there was something about all that cold rain and warming up to the wood stove each night.  there was something about the winter there that holds my heart.  and i never knew that i would warm up so incredibly to what we know is the cold season.

it is such a beautiful day outside and i wanted to share with everyone a picture i Love with two of the most beautiful faces in the world.  it was taken months ago, but i think it is amazing and it gives me so much happiness…

jackson and maka, i Love you so…

i guess it has been much longer since i have written than it feels like… i never intend to go so much time without having written something, anything… but each time i sit down to write here, i want to write something significant or mesmerizing… and quite honestly, that does not happen that often.  my life, when i think back to being in my late teens and early twenties, was so full of passion and new feeling and all these things… and now, i feel so set in my day to day… like nothing is new or beautiful or whatever.  maybe im jaded.  i want to feel so passionately.  mostly, i look around and wonder how people Love the things they Love and why people get excited about something that seems ridiculous to me.  dont get me wrong, i Love hearing about my friends successes and joys and adorations… i live for that… but i feel i am just living vicariously through them.  i want so badly to know joy like they do about those things.  i dont feel depressed.  i simply feel like i am in the wrong place in the world and i feel helpless in trying to resolve it.  i look back on my time in oregon and realize that i had it great and almost perfect for a while and that now i am in a city i never ever wanted to return to.  and while getting out of this place is on the horizon, i feel it will never be soon enough.  i dislike that i am writing so negatively, because there is lots of joy in my day to day… paul has been kind and warm and cuddly when i need it in the cool autumn night, and the dogs have never been more attentive or Loving or downright fun.  but, i cant imagine that i really want to sit and write about my dogs.  or paul.  or even myself.  i think so often that is why i put off calling friends when i lived in oregon.  i always wanted to have a story… something grand to tell them when i phoned, like, “this amazing thing happened today,” but it seemed like it never came.  and now looking back, i think to myself, hey, man, there were so many amazing days… and now i fear i am falling back into being somewhere and forgetting to see all the good even though there is some bad… i should probably call a friend today and say, “hey, the leaves are yellow, and the sky is blue, and the air smells fresh.  and that is all i have, but i needed to share it.  i needed to tell someone that this moment was amazing to me.  even if it was trite to you.”  i think i need to start appreciating even the most mundane.  i should stop shrugging my shoulders and form actual concrete opinions and lose friends and make friends and laugh and cry.  i should stop being so passive, which is what i think i was trying to be for so long… i think i got passive and easy-going jumbled up…  and easy-going is nice, but i feel like i went from easy-going into passive and somehow slid right into complacent.  and that is the last thing i want.  cause i really do have fire in my belly.