Nov 2005

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foriegn tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.

Maria Rainer

“Be patient” she felt the rush of a sigh pass between her unsmiling lips as she wrote this quote down. It was the first entry into a new journal titled – Dwell In Possibility. Something Emily Dickinson was quoted as saying, or had inked thoughtfully down among a mad stack of papers in her time. She had supposed anyway, because her name was imprinted into the leather cover just under the title.

An empty journal, it was as exciting to her as an aritist is in front of an empty canvas. The wonder of what will be and what sort of life will be created from absolute nothing. She figured only other artists and God himself would understand. And though her spirit was exhausted and she breathed only the gray of the air that encased her, she still brought her eyes to the quote once more. It was saying something. She just was not sure exacty what it was.

She pressed her cheap ball point pen to the clean lined page, and began to write:

Be patient. So easy to write. So easy to read. So easy to say, not so easy to be. But, in this quote, an easy reminder when i start the feel of rush under skin, the wanting of what comfort can bring only when the future is known to me. It helps me to remember this quote. That running does not suit me yet, my life right now is infantile. I must learn as i go. Baby Steps.

May 17, 2019

When I pick up my old journals and thumb through them, I remember that woman. She was scared. Alone. Anxious. But, determined. Determined I was going to move though that muck and to the otherside, where a clear trail was waiting. Okay, somewhat clear. But, the everyday struggle was going to ease. The struggle of going through a divorce from a man that had me believe I was nothing without him. And walking on sheets of broken glass, was love.

In between the pages of these journals, inserted, were fall leaves. Collected when I made trips to the river or the city park, sometimes plucked off trees I was passing in the parking lot. Leaves eased my anxiety. They were beautiful, each one different, they represented change. And after they faded into compost, they would again uncurl, green, and vibrant in Spring. The phoenix of the forests.

And as much as I loved leaves, I loved trees. But, they were impossible to press between the pages of my journal. So, I drew them. Sketched them down with cheap pens on lined pages. And I smile now, as I thumb through page after page. Reading words of encouragement to myself, remembering every moment I sat and sketched out my current enviroment. I remember who I was then.

I thought I was nothing.

But, I was actually, everything. Every little thing that I had tucked away from him. Buried deep into myself so he would not destroy, or burn, or tear down. She was still there, I had found her, my everything. She was only sleeping within the maze of my being. And every thought I wrote, every sketch I drew, every leaf collected were bread crumbs that led her back to me. I see that so easily now, within each journaI I open.

I flip back to the first page of my first journal, my eyes moving over the words by, Maria Rainer “And the point is, to live everything..”

I smile as all my locked doors opened, and I carefully slip my feet into running shoes.