Sitting in the kitchen. Windows open. Blizzard. Snow drifts wafting through the screen and falling on my face. The cold feels good.

Today I started crying. I didn't stop. For hours. I haven't cried in quite some time. Perhaps it is because I rallied through two holidays. Quite well I might add. I have been pushing. Persevering. Being. Accepting. And then I broke a bit today. It's not a woe is me pity thing. It happens. We as humans have emotions. They need to come out. They came out.

I'm not sure what I was crying for. Perhaps the memory. Perhaps that at 36 I feel so far away from the things I believe truly matter. Perhaps because it's a blizzard and though I could be surrounded right now I chose to be here, hiding in my kitchen with the windows open, blowing cold air on my face, thinking. Writing. Perhaps it's because I can't change time and space and decisions long since past. Perhaps it's because I'm just a girl sometimes, who likes to be alone, listen to sad songs and think about that which I can't control.

I want to save the world. Myself included. I want everyone to be happy, filled with love - with peace. I want smiles and unicorns and rainbows. I want the intangible.

And so I sit. I my kitchen. With my wine and my smokes, staring into a storm and wondering how it is that I will shovel myself out. Literally, and figuratively.

I have been waiting for a long time to know the answer. There is so much beauty cept that one little widget that won't seem to sort itself. I wish it would. I wish I would.

And so this is Christmas...

And what have you done? Another year over...a new one's just begun.

My wish for the universe is quite simple....to get to a place in which we embrace life's shit storms, coast through them and treasure the beautiful bits - because amongst the chaos there are still many.

It's quite simple really....

Happy Christmas.

Gimme gimme

I’ve been trying lately to dissect the concept of wanting what we can’t have.  I do believe for many years I subscribed greatly to that.  The thrill of the chase and all.  And then, it stopped one day because I really wanted what I couldn’t have and not because I couldn’t have it, but because I loved it.  I loved him.  And well, then the game wasn’t so fun anymore.  It hurt.  So, I stopped playing.

I believe it’s difficult to appreciate the things, the people in our lives in a way that sort of transcends all of the everyday bullshit.  We are so easily distracted by pretty things and take for granted the simplicity of love.  The real kind of love when someone stays by your side has your back – even when we catch ourselves banging against walls.  The concept of ‘leaving’ is no longer a notion.  There is no greener grass.  There are certainly other ‘things’ but if you can’t find a way to love all that is around you, regardless of the variations and formations it all may take, well, then you’ll just keep searching under rocks and behind shadows forever.  Because eventually, you will come to find, that what you can’t have has nothing to do with anyone else.  It has to do with you.  And if it’s not in your life, then it’s not supposed to be.

I’m not sure why my mind is spinning in circles about this lately.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve broken through something and I no longer feel held or compelled to search anywhere outside of my reality for things far ‘greater’.  The universe gives you gifts.  These gifts come in the form of people.  In the form of moments - even shitty ones.  If you don’t embrace them, you will lose them.  We miss windows all the time because we are too busy looking outside of them, backwards and beyond them as opposed to at them.  We have these chances, and when we become too consumed with what they mean, what they will be, what they will bring us as opposed to looking very simply at what they are - we skew their very purpose.

There is a reason to simplify.  There is a reason to believe that your life is of your making and creation.  There is a reason to love the gifts you’ve been living.  There is a reason to stop fucking bitching and wanting something more.  There is a reason to stop being afraid that this life is exactly all you’ll ever get and be.  Because when you stand in the cold air and you watch your steamy breath and your eyes blink from sunlight….that is enough.  That is all there is.  There is nothing more to want or to have.  There is no ellipsis. 

Anyway, I guess it’s about gratitude and wanting what you have.  Not what you don’t. 

Thanks for listening.

30,000

Feet in the air.  Tired.  Want a shower.  Want my bed.  Want a hug.  Annoyed by people reading my computer screen and not minding their P's & Q's (yah, dude next to me that means you...). Feeling like my ass is flat as a pancake from sitting on it in endless days of meetings, planes, cars...more planes...Mildly crabby and just want to get home to my big empty house with an overflowing mailbox to greet me.


I want to be laying on the ground, breathing cold fresh air with this as my view....giggling....Sigh.

Thanks for listening to my whiny rant. 

Indeed

Tu Me Manques

That is all.

Pre-sunrise rambles....

Can't sleep. Dry heat. Coarse air. Dreams requiring more analysis than one mind can offer. So I stare into the light of a computer screen.

In my dream (one part of the series of many bits), I am standing at the edge of water. I just keep repeating, "It's too deep to cross right now, the tide is too high. I can go around it, or wait. I think I should wait." If I was to get all analytical on myself, I think it's about slowing down...taking more time. Pacing this process. I've had such a surge of adrenaline like excitement to dive back into my life, I negated that I still have much work to do on the self. This weekend went by with a fuzzy blur of running this way and that - which was deliriously wonderful in it's own right, however I'm easily distracted. I promised myself not to distract myself from myself this time. Do it right once and for all.

I have today. I want today to be for me. A long walk on the beach, a lazy breakfast, some OCD-ing of my house, making soup, reading a book, drinking tea...the things that bring me peace and slow me down.

Baby steps Tarah, baby steps. It's wonderful to feel a sense of energy and freedom, but that doesn't negate the strong need to be gentle with myself. I don't want to jump too far ahead - so much so that I miss a step and falter.

Make sense?

Thanks for listening. I'm going to go back to sleep now. Shhhhh.....

It's amazing....

I can't think of a song that better exemplifies my current state of being. When you climb out of the fog of self, there is a freedom...a rebirth. It is in fact amazing. The way you feel all giddy and childlike - as if the world is new and quite possibly anything you want can in fact be yours. It's the Phoenix, climbing from the ashes. It fucking rocks.

Lyrical Imbibement

Music has always affected me. Since I was a little girl I’ve always been able to remember every word to every song hearing lyrics at times only once. Words in general have an incredibly strong impact on me so to hear words with lyrical accompaniment….fuggetaboutit.

The difficulty is however, that without most people knowing, I bind memories to songs and so I can never quite let go of things. In the most random of moments, a memory from lifetimes ago can surround me so quickly just by simply hearing one note. I suppose I am amongst many who experience this.

Right now, I am on a plane. A song is playing and mentally I am swept back to driving with the top down in Montauk, NY, sun shining on my face, holding his hand believing that quite possibly we had found our way after all of these years to a place that made sense. That moment would pass and I would eventually let go and walk away recognizing that ‘that’ place never truly existed for us, but in this moment, I am back there, smelling salty air, loving the boy that I had loved since I was 29 years old. Sigh.

I guess the perk is now that I don’t cry when I hear this song or shudder and mentally smash my iPod to bits, I wistfully stare and find gratitude that I have found freedom in my forgiveness. I find gratitude in realizing that although he remains a subtle knock on the door of my conscious I now move and transition through days without anything more than a fleeting thought of him. I know it is the same for him. He’s breathing a bit easier now and although he sits in darkness some nights staring across bays wondering where I went, he’s better. We’re both better.

There is freedom in forgiveness. I am grateful that I forgive myself and him for failing miserably at loving one another. Someone said to me once that the worst person for you to love is a soul mate because they are supposed to teach you something and then move on. If you hold them to you, it will always be a reflection far too great to bare. I am not sure why it is that for the better part of a decade we chose to bind ourselves to one another, too tortured to think of life without each other as opposed to learning what we needed to and then moving on – letting go in love. I guess it hurts to lose something you love even if it was never meant to be yours. But in hurt there is healing and in healing there is life….I have so very much missed my life. It’s a lonely existence when you misplace all of your energy into someone else and not yourself. The emptiness I now have in the release of it reminds me that ‘I’ exist again - if that makes sense. I guess for many years now, I have missed ‘me’. It’s at times been a treacherous road back to the self, but I’m grateful for it regardless.

I’m rambling. The song is still playing. If it’s alright with the universe I think I will remember love for just a few minutes more and send energy across these 3,000 miles so that he too will have some light within his darkness tonight.

Thanks for listening.

Stage 5 - Acceptance

I prefer this to Stage 4. Stage 4 was rough. This stage...a bit more pallitable. I accept.

Yes, I much prefer Stage 5.

Sundays

I think have become the most tedious bit. Today, I'm still hiding under the covers. It's cloudy and dark and well, I'm tired and don't see much reason to crawl out into the world.

Becky said to me once when we were discussing being single vs. being in a relationship (Becky is married) - she said, "I am envious of your Friday nights, and you are envious of my Sunday nights." I think it sums most of it up right there.

I recognize that I made a very difficult choice recently and that it will take awhile for all of the bits and pieces to sift and sort themselves out. I know that throughout this 'phase' of being I need to be gentle and kind to myself and others. Breathe my way through it. I recognize the art of letting go. I would like to think that I have spent the majority of my life perfecting it.

Although there is pride in choosing yourself, your strength and solitude and being alone until it's truly 'right' - it still aches and pinches in the oddest of moments. More so when you really just want someone to curl up next to you, pull you in and breathe quietly beside you so that your mind can rest.

Today however, I want to wallow a bit. I want to lay in bed, stare at my ceiling. Think about long Sunday walks, late breakfasts, sharing the New York Times, cooking Sunday dinners. All of the happy normalcy's that make up a Sunday. Today I feel like missing that. It's not to say that at some point I won't pull myself out of bed, perhaps shower and go join the Italian Feast that some of my friends are conjuring up...I will because I will be bored with my own thoughts and that's what you do. You pull yourself up.

For the next hour or two however, I will lay here. Just like this and miss things.

Sometimes you just need to shut up and dance.

I think

I'm starting to make sense of it all. To feel better. I've started sleeping again. The pain in my chest is subsiding. I had always known what to do. I just never seemed able to muster up the cahones. To make the choice to be with just me.

I feel a twinge hopeful again. That whole, world is my oyster type of shit. I don't dread the holidays. I don't dread much. I am free. Finally...finally free. I won't ever look behind me again. I won't ever open that door, or window again. My soul won't allow for it.

Time

It is 2692 days from the start date to the end date, but not including the end date.

Or 7 years, 4 months, 13 days excluding the end date.

Alternative time units

2692 days can be converted to one of these units:

* 232,588,800 seconds
* 3,876,480 minutes
* 64,608 hours
* 384 weeks

That's how long.

Nostalgia

It's never a good thing when the wine is flowing and the albums come out. However, about once a year - oddly enough, usually in the fall, it happens.

Not sure why it is but I get this compelling need to review my life. Sift through the faces and places. Remember the 'when's'. I don't need to state the obvious that coincidentally mildly depressing music strums along in the background. I think it's part of having a vagina. I can't imagine boys do this. I don't know. I'm not one.

It always starts with this album of my childhood. Old black and whites and transcends through the London years, marriage...and then comes to a screeching halt. Because we are in a digital age and well, I have no more pictures. My life in albums ends at 28 years old. The rest of me is 'on line'. It's mildly fucked up in theory when you spell it out like that. That my memories now can only be found through computer screens. There is nothing tangible to keep hidden away safely in plastic bins to pull out every year and sift through. I can delete it all if I want to. There is no basement of the past 8 years of my life.

I miss the days of not being able to edit myself and the excitement of one hour photo's. I miss not being deletable.

Humph.

Secret Garden

My courtyard is somewhat representative of my inner emotional workings today. Things sort of strewn and scattered about. Leaves falling, seasons passing. Changes. A bit dark but still some flowers fighting to stay in the sun. It needs a clean up. For sure. But for right now, it will stay messy until I can motivate myself to put things in their right place.

Soon.

You ever feel....

Like you've always known the right answer...you just stopped asking yourself the right questions?

Exactly.

The Being of Just Being

I ventured West in search of some things. My noggin' hadn't been sitting right for most of the summer. For as much as I did indeed have one of the most fantastic summers of my life, something still wasn't sorted.

I sit here, at a desk, at a window, working, over looking the waters that surround San Francisco, next to the Bay Bridge. How have I traveled here in the past for business and not seen how gorgeous it is here? How did I miss this? It's like I kept skipping right over San Francisco and hitting Seattle instead (which is still to date one of my favorite cities). I assume there is much we skip over if we don't stop for a moment to actually look.

I knew after sitting on the beach for 17 days to close out my summer it was time for something more. I'd grown far too stagnant in my gorgeous sleepy town. For all of the many wonders that exist there as well - there is after all, an entire universe still left to explore.

There are no conclusions, no answers yet to the few that I came here seeking - but I guess more than anything, I needed to remember what it was like to 'be' somewhere else. To see, taste, explore something else. It had been so much of my life until I got wrapped up in doing a whole lot of nothing. I have missed this. And, if I am honest, I haven't spent much time yet asking myself or the universe answers. I'm relying on them naturally arriving.

Each morning, I wake up well before the sun rises. I watch all of the lights of the mountain and the city slowly turn on. I watch the sun creep up over the water. For now, and for the next few days until I fly back across the country and wander my way back home. This is enough.

The answers will come. They always do. You are always where you are supposed to be and for now, I'm supposed to be here. And when it's time. I'll be there. And all will be as it should.

The Left Coast

Wow...a year since I've written. I haven't really felt the need as my life has been coasting along swimmingly. Some rip tides (literally) however nothing that kept my mind spinning in any direction that needed an outlet of release.

Next week I'm heading out to the Left Coast to see how my feet feel on the ground there. To explore. To remove myself from my comfort zone and see if it's time for an adventure. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't but the tiny little flutter in my belly urging me to seek out new experiences hasn't ebbed so in the very least, it's worth a weeks time to find some answers.

Don't get me wrong, I love my sleepy town but me coming back here was never supposed to be permanent...I just got lost in salty air, the laughter of my friends - at times love - and forgot about all of the spaces and places in the world outside of here that I so used to love getting lost in as well. I have the itch to release myself from the security - at least for awhile. Maybe a week will be enough, maybe a week will be just the beginning. Time will tell.

That being said, I plan in my off hours to be exploring, photographing, writing, eating...and I want to get back to documenting things so I thought I'd give the ol' blog a dusting off and get things rolling again. See if I can't actually have some fun with writing as opposed to just writing for the sake of emotional purge. It would be nice for a change to write for the sake of the beauty that I see in the world.

First stop...San Fran. Stay tuned.