The journey

I’ve waited so patiently to see The sky against The shadow behind the tree The universe, spread wide Reality phased out standing amiss Darkness Complete Feeling so small Yet feeling so privileged To see the stars Void of buildings Light Worries Fear In a field .beyond. Reality One tab        Two tab I danced in the wet Barefoot Moon-kissed skin Bright The child inside was reunited again The playground of dimensional time             wooden bridges and metal slides

but the moon always caught my eye

I would lay in a million fields to stare at you           over and over Your light brought warmth and comfort

It’s back to reality through the  rocky path covered in obstacles There is only one direction        focus onward

The goal is to see that sky     Open Up

to the universe      to take my breathe away

Now that the sun has been out for more than afternoon, I’ve noticed a few extra noises that come with the sun.

The stretching of the skeleton of the houses make the roofs clink, clack Like an old body getting up to stretch in the morning. The creaks that come before the groans of our age.

Slate roofs, like a wave of spines stretching across the Valley’s skirts.

The green that runs along the powerlines that line the winding roads that reach up to the clouds.

Louis de Bernières in Corelli’s Mandolin: "Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident."

If you have ever taken an Abnormal Psych class you catch a bit of hypochondria... because every disorder sounds like you.

Or maybe, just me. Though after having an amazing day and sitting in a parking lot with friends, catching people doing crazy things, I feel normal again. Its easy to feel anxious and worried and stressed about the future and the past. Yet it takes away from the moment and reality you are in.

I know.. I know..sometimes you can't help it. I thought with a new year I could leave last years problems behind. But one can not simply wish problems away and expect the recognition of a new calender year to take away anything. So how did I stay "sane" growing up with this festering stress growing up? I was always seeking out strong women to be my fill-in mom. ((My mom and I have lived in separate states for over a decade now.))

My mom, alone, has dealt with so much loss and heartache.

Yet

She steadily raised my brothers and I the best possible way she could. Took up multiple jobs to pay for two houses and food for faces. Giving us a "good" Christmas was important to her. I watched that woman fight for what she loved.

There is no way I can be "crazy" because the one woman who has every understandable right to be CRAZY,

Isn't

Exactly how I feel right now

"The whole idea of it makes me feel like I'm coming down with something, something worse than any stomach ache or the headaches I get from reading in bad light-- a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back, but that is because you have forgotten the perfect simplicity of being one and the beautiful complexity introduced by two. But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit. At four I was an Arabian wizard. I could make myself invisible by drinking a glass of milk a certain way. At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window watching the late afternoon light. Back then it never fell so solemnly against the side of my tree house, and my bicycle never leaned against the garage as it does today, all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, as I walk through the universe in my sneakers. It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends, time to turn the first big number.