Goodbye 2014

   These trees taken from a fast moving car blur like the year just gone past.

Dec 31 2014

Here it is the last day of the year and I am not writing out resolutions this year- seeking rather to find REAL SOLUTIONS for my life- breaking away from oppression and all the other things that weigh me down and keep me from flying-

I would like to say that I am fine, but my health and my dreams tell me that I am not. I have many unresolved issues in my life and relationships that need to be forsaken. I have dreams to make real and life changes to make happen. But I will not make any resolutions this year. I want to live in the moment;  And this moment, cold and windy in Las Vegas, is where I am now. Once more, living not in my own home, but as a guest in another home-waiting for the chance to be restored to my own, which is now cold and closed up-waiting patiently for my return.

 

And in this moment, there is a flu bug to defeat. A nasty invasion that demands my attention and clogs my thinking. And at this moment, there is a new year to contemplate. A year of hopeful changes, and perhaps an end to all this nomadic living. A time to settle down and stay in one place for a change.

 

Thankful for all the good things that happened in 2014, but also thankful that this year is over. 

 

No more waxing poetic or  trying to make sense of the things that didn't make sense or work out, or come together. Instead, moving on, picking myself up, dusting myself off and starting all over again.

 

Welcome 2015!  I hope you bring joy, and peace, and wisdom, and fun, and new experiences!

I hope you treat this old warrior kindly! Bring me what you will, and take from me what needs to go away, and hold me up, and if you do your best, I will not make a resolve to do my best

I will live each moment as it comes, and hope to look back next year with a smile!

In Love with the Light

"Light is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it,"
   Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake


This lovely September light has been my companion these past few days. I have enjoyed her company immensely. I have greedily taken these days of summer's end to spend in solitude, reflecting, pondering, waiting, searching for answers, and sleeping soundly like a cat on a window sill in the afternoon while the sun filters through the curtains and wraps me up like burrito safe and warm.

  

 
Sapphire and diamond skies this September afternoon


Shadows dance 
Wind keeps time
leaves wave like the
Queen from the back of the coach

 

 

Six Decades on Planet Earth

Six decades
living and being
part of sunlight and clouds
and happy and sad and surprised
so much of good and bad
 but
still so much left to learn and
still so sheltered in so many ways.

I am stubborn and tenacious and gentle and creative and
flawed and feisty and graceful and clumsy.
But here, nonetheless, for the ones who want or need
my presence and presents and patience.
I have had adventures and people who have come and gone.
I am happy about the ones who have stayed all along-
for the ride, for the food, for the laughs, for the words of comfort,
for whatever it was they got that they needed from me at the time.

Simplicity and wonder are what I am-for what it is worth.
money or success hasn't been a motivator so there wasn't much of that
in these six decades, but what has been necessary has been there always!

the world has changed a lot in these sixty years.
I saw a lot of beauty fade from the earth.
New inventions seem confusing and sometimes unnecessary to me.
why haven't there been cures or improvements in all this time?

-lately
it seems like we as the human race are walking backwards
when I see the news I am not seeing evolving or tolerance
or any move toward peace.

But in spite of this, I am an optimist
and have thought about the end of the story- mine as well as the earth's.
I am hoping that in the next six decades there will be
renaissance, cures, tolerance, beauty, joy, and less anger.

But then, I was born during a hurricane.
I know what winds of change can do.

I have lived sixty years,
and I have learned that hope is one of the great gifts

But I don't know everything yet.

Walking Walden Pond

Walden Pond -June 2014


"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." -Henry David Thoreau

It was a bit anti-climatic to finally go to Walden Pond, and yet I felt the same enchantment that Thoreau experienced in his day as I took a walk around the whole pond. I wondered what he would have thought if he could see it now; college students squealing as their bikini-clad bodies hit the cool water, families picnicking on the shore, ropes and signs directing walkers away from the deadly deer ticks, and the gift shop filled with memorabilia made in China.

Still, the pond itself was lovely, and the water was still clear and cool. The woods were inaccessible in places- unlike the free space that Thoreau enjoyed. I tried to imagine him tromping this path in the pitch dark after a night in the town at the pub, and shuddered at the coldness he must have endured in the winter. I saw the replica of the tiny cabin he called home, and tried to think where all my books and trinkets would fit if I had to live in a space so small. I walked the narrow sectioned off path around the pond and thought about simplicity and living a deliberate life. The drive from Maine to Walden Pond was anything but idyllic-there was traffic and construction, and noise, and yet, once I was actually there, I could see why Thoreau loved the place enough to write a book about it. I was able for a moment in time to actually walk the same path he did, and I was able to think about how quiet and dark the nights must have been. It was a time-travel experience that I can re-live when I need to feel simplicity. freedom, and solitude.