Re: [SOCIAL SQUARE DANCING] 11/14/2005 11:08:15 PM

Thank you. So much. You know I love you. Your vision and your ability to articulate these things. I look to you as much for your wisdom as for your laughter, imagination and heart. But aren't these all facets of the same thing, anyway...

There are times when I feel like it would be easier to be someone else. But when have I ever gone for “ease”?

Have you ever slipped? I did it a couple times this weekend. Once as I was contemplating climbing down the rocks to be closer to the sea. And then again when we were packing the car. Each time I got a rush of energy that started at the very soles of my feet. Electric. I used to interpret this feeling as a sigh of relief from my feet. Or a grasping, at a cellular level, a clamping down to the ground. The feeling of the effort of not falling. But now I’m beginning to recognize that the electricity of slippery feet, that this feeling is a thrill. And that to be thrilled is attractive to me. Not all the time, it’s true.

When I feel most low, it's because I imagine my life is over. That there is nothing left to do. Nothing new to experience. That the choices I've made are indelible and demand inevitability in their outcome. In the space I am right now, which is not a low one, I can see the faultiness of that logic. There is no "over" and there is no "forever" there is only the best we can do from moment to moment. And there is always beauty somewhere — one must only look to the delicate uplift of the tree boughs to see it. And I always have the choice of walking out my door, leaving everything behind and doing something other than this.

Would I even crave the unsettledness at all were it not for the strength and security of the ties that bind me? Those ties that inevitably set me free. The bonds between family — chosen and not — and faith that my feet will be intelligent on the floor. That perhaps while I may be sunshine pouring into your eyes, I am also a cat landing on my feet, driven by curiosity with all my instincts intact.

I feel like I've spent the better part of two years (and probably more, but who wants to follow that trail backwards?) questioning myself. Wondering if I'm doing it right. If there's a better way. Looking to others for the best way. And perhaps now I've finally convinced myself, through trial and error the harshest of nun-like teachers, that there is only the right way for me.

I'm laughing at myself right now. You know me, my delight in analysis. In thinking. Hard. "But how do you feeeeeeel?!" I imagine you saying.

I feel alright. Tonight, I feel alright. I feel like I'm at a buffet, a smorgasbord of possibility. This is what I like the most. To feel like the gate is open, the gangplank is lowered. I may never step off the boat, but I like having the option. That I can eat whatever I like, but my plate is only so big.

And we haven't even discussed the possibility of having seconds...

I was thinking of starting another blog, this one inspired by Professor Bartleboom's mahogany box full of letters. Letters written to his one and only love as he waits and studies the end of all things natural. I would start a blog in which I would write love letters to the lover I long for, who I miss, who I want to have beside me. The lover I have yet to meet. Then I got to the end of the book. You know the part, when Bartleboom solemnely proffers his chest of letters with the earnest words, "I've been waiting a long time for you." No, not the first time. No, not the second time. Yes! When he finally gives them to the servant. When he laughs for a week. When he sees the ridiculousness of waiting for perfection. The grand cosmic joke that there is no storybook ending, there are no limits. That we continue and continue and continue. That the three act structure was invented to make sense of our chaotic experience of life. Daily life.

So no new blog. Nothing as tight as a unifying theme. This messy sprawling document will have to be good enough.

Oh dear. I seem to be experiencing some sort of third wind or something. How will I ever get to sleep tonight, I wonder.