What can I say right now except that Life is Good? How about: Life is Very, Very Good . . .
Getting up in the mornings before the sun rises, getting the morning routine things out of the way - the washing of face, the feeding of kitties, the giving of insulin, the brushing of teeth and hair - then climbing on my bike for a 20 minute ride around the neighborhood, followed by a little weightlifting, some yoga. Getting my motor purring with freshly ground coffee called Dharma Beans, a solid breakfast of eggs with parmesan cheese and cajun spice, a fresh tomato, eaten standing over the sink, dripping juice and seeds down the side of my arm. Showing up for my first week of work every morning bright and early, my hair done, a nice pair of stretch trousers and shiny girl shoes on. Driving the familiar streets of the hometown I grew up in, the sea breeze in my hair, classic southern rock on the radio.
I've been writing all of my life, or at least since eight or nine. And I've always been aware of how words vibrate off the page, the computer screen, from the lips to impact reality. How they shift it, change it for not just the reader but for the writer as well. Telling stories is a kind of emotional alchemy. But over the past four years I've been steadily getting more quiet, until the only real place I've Told My Story has been here on this blog, in these often wild and wooly posts. But something at base level is shifting inside of me, and I get that I need to not write about it. At the place of living that I stand, I need to not analyze it, just live it, be in it, discover how to navigate it.
But I come here pretty often, to sit in my chair and stare at the blank blog posting template, not writing, but simply thinking about what I might want to say, what I might want to hold onto. And then I let go, close the browser window and get up, go about my living, call my sis and meet her out for a bite to eat, hang with my bro, read a novel, go for a walk, snuggle a kitty.
I don't know if this is going to make any sense, but for the first time, I face each moment with vibrant awareness of life and death, carry them both in gentle hands as I walk through my days. And in doing this, great joy is being generated from somewhere inside of me. That's really all I know for sure: Joy is making itself known. Everything else is just supposition and interpretation.
I'll leave you with this:
To everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones,
and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
a time of war, and a time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
. . . which if you think about it, really could be summed up as: Yes.
