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.

The most difficult part...

Is when I can't speak. When my emotions become so jolted that it renders me into silence. They harden in my chest and my belly and the noise becomes so overwhelming that it buzzes around me like a blanket. The deafening of noise where all goes quiet and still and my spirit retreats to protect.

For all that I have done and seen. For all that I have walked through, this is always the most difficult part. The breakdown to rebuild. It's the loneliest fucking place on earth.

And so it goes...

Sometimes....

I wish I had an off button. My lips, my voice, everything from moving. Sometimes, I can't speak what I think eloquently...although in my mind it flows as clearly as dangling fingertips in crystal placid water.

Tonight, is one of those nights, that I just can't say what I feel and right now it's really fucking important that I do. As always, I have to let it out so that I can let something in...mental constipation.

Grits teeth.