Author Lillian Jade

6/8/13 Snapshots

2013-06-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

Part of growing up (and I do mean the growing up that ONLY takes place in your adult years, not the years it takes reaching your adult years) is leaving things behind. You move on without them. Houses you have lived in, cities you now, live in no longer, people who become, people you use to know, making space for people you now know, simply by virtue of the fact that you have moved on. That life moves on, taking all of us along with it. I think we leave traces of ourselves behind in these such places, these such people, some holding so much emotional charge that you can barely stand to think about them any longer, yet, you know, they are never quite lost from you. We leave pieces of ourselves behind, traces of where we were, who we were.... snapshots of a process!

5/30/13

2013-05-29T10:39:00.004-07:00

May 30th I am at Book Expo 2013 Javits Center

5/29/13 My Indefinite Season

2013-05-29T10:36:00.001-07:00

I’ve done a round-table introduction just about every week since I moved here. After my name, I say where I’m from. It’s the natural next step in these kinds of “tell us a bit about yourself” prompts. I’m **** and I’m from ******

To describe myself, I’m left with words like “once was” and “not quite,” words that hint at incompleteness. They mean that I’ve lost, or gained (something) – what exactly, I’m not sure yet. Perhaps it is my sense of place of self, of purpose, my sense of belonging and furthered sense of now becoming.

I am not quite sure, on many days, what day it actually is anymore. One day seems to blend into the next, until they all just flow as one continuance one. I would know it was Wednesday if I were still 7, however. I would know it was Wednesday because I would be wearing my day-of-the-week underwear and I exactly remember how dutifully I relied on my unmentionables to celebrate the passage of my days. But, I am all grown up now, and my days of the week have turned to a bit sexier lacier ones. I liked the days of the week ones though; they kept me on track, even on those hazy crazy days.
I don’t know that I was 7 for sure. They didn’t make undergarments for that sort of thing.
I said I had wanted to be a writer when I grew up. I would sit on the radiator and scribble out words, my siblings, probably playing basketball, or bike riding at the neighbor’s house like normal children. I liked to read Nancy Drew and eat treats littered with high fructose corn syrup, while writing with a red Paper mate on blank journal pages.(I have long since tossed the high fructose syrup diet and taken up running and yoga years ago) In my own state of mentality I thought the red pen was elegant, sexy even by the time I became a teenager. Black and blue just seemed so dull, so unerringly unfeminine. Surprise to say so though, no, I never felt the same dullness for my day of the week undergarments. (They kept me in check, on schedule.) I have, eventually, as you know, become a writer. A writer whom also has given up her day of the week undergarments. That is a contributing factor as to why I may not always know what day it is anymore. But, for sure, I am sitting not knowing it in black lace bikini, or a midnight blue lace boy short.
It hadn’t occurred to me that this ever mattered. Now, it has occurred to me, how could anything else ever matter as much?
What you wear as undergarments always matters. It changes your life.
Somewhere between being dutiful about my days of the week, and walking into a Victoria Secret store, I grew up. I knew I wanted to live my life for what mattered, for someone who mattered.
Someone like myself.
My undergarments truly shape the way I present myself as a woman, as a writer, as the new inspired soul that I have become.
Born of the hustle and bustle, warmth and love, laughter and insanity of my infamous family. Here I still stand, living in the everything after. Living in all of the grownup,that I have become.

5/14/13 A Soaking Rain

2013-05-16T11:08:00.001-07:00

The rain started late Friday night. Saturday morning I woke up early to a pearly gray dawn. Three hours later, it looked the same, as if time had stopped. Five hours later, six, and still the opalescent light. Everyone in his or her homes, the dirt road remained silent. Everything was silent, really, except the rain against the shingles and eaves. Silence that has been born out of impatience: an impatience to find a place for everything, and for me, and to have those places feel anchoring enough. In the past few weeks, I have felt the need for an Away message to hang on the door of my life—preferably one with a witty quote or Green Day lyrics for the full throwback and nostalgia effect. For the first time in more than a few years, I am no longer living out of a suitcase, the metaphoric suitcase I always felt I was living out of, that is. I own permanent shelves. I have put permanent nails in walls. I have greeted and met with people with the confidence that we will all still be right here tomorrow . . . and in 30 days, and in 6 months, and in years from now. My universe has been flooded with a kind of permanence.
I have not yet pointed the camera at the new corners that make this home now feel like me, nor have I written about the new batch of muffins I have baked here, or of the oven now having been baptized by my apple strudel creation, and chocolate Babka slice of heaven. The smell of my cologne left on bed sheets, and hand lotion on bathroom towels. My glasses perched on a book I am nearly finished reading, as a newest one waits for me on the coffee table. I realize that I have been waiting for a rain like this, an all-day soul-soaking rain, for months now. Something in me is breathing more easily, and something else feels washed away. I feel firmly planted here, bound to an address, magazine subscriptions, a barista who knows my coffee order, and a bartender who knows my signature drink. I own possessions that make it impossible to pack up and leave into the night. Nobody has ever left lightly with three coffee makers in tow. I am intrigued by all of my little shifts: the packed box, the unpacked box, the new photo on the wall, my coat hanging neatly in the hall closet, right next to his. The markers of a new chapter, punctuated by a different routine, marked by different milestones. I document the process of moving, the process of saying goodbye to a past life, the process of making a home and then disassembling it as though it were made of Lego’s, to, again, the process of building a home of permanence. The photographs freeze those transitional moments in time to remind me that life is not just the story of neat here’s and exciting there’s, but of all of my clumsy in-betweens. Once an embracer of process, I am now embracing the photos not taken, the words not written. I am living in a blank away message, waiting for the lyrics to populate it, and for new processes to appeal photogenic ally to a pair of eyes now perpetually in love.

4/23/13 Within the Shadows of the House

2013-04-23T14:42:00.003-07:00

I remember sitting on the sand, watching waves dwindle into nothingness until the vast blue sky disappeared behind the sunset. I remember the sharp, tangy smell of seaweed, the bite of salty wind. Once the sea hissed away, it left a bank of damp sand crowded with tiny shells, glass and rolling pebbles tossing in the pulling tide. I remember little legs rushing along the sand, little arms tightly holding handles of plastic buckets filled with sand. Some memories are so intact I can play them back in my mind like an old movie, others, swept away in a swollen tide, in complete silence. Sudden, swollen waves that had appeared from nowhere had impatiently licked away the memories longest out of reach. But, I do remember how summer was always the most forgiving part of any year, stripping to a daringly brief bikini and flinging myself into the sea. Incandescent with joy, sunshine hanging like a curtain down my back, convincing everyone, most of all myself, that time, summertime, altered things a bit. Breathing in great, wolfish gulps of sea air. I remember watching children play, I remember tears, I remember being heartbroken, I remember shouting into the wind, and hopeing summer never ended. I remember summer always altered things, the storms inside the house blew out to sea easier than the blizzards of winter ever seemed to be able to. The blue sea always emerged from those swirling desperate winters. Triumphant seagulls shrieked and circled overhead. I waited, always, for summer to come, but, always, it would grow cold once again.

4/22/13 Shadows

2013-04-22T03:31:00.000-07:00

I imagine her in the window, her white dress fading a little. The walls of her familiar room protecting her. She is dwelling in the possible, as she puts it. The floors are washed with a shifting sunlight that doesn’t let on to the deceiving cold of spring’s first days or the searing heat of a summer still to come. There is comfort in this unknowing place, there in hope in hesitation.
And, then I image her descending the stairs, and walking out onto the lawn. I see her steps shaking dew from the morning grass, and the goose bumps rising-up on her ankles. In that moment, she is staring back at the house, where she imagined this place so differently.
I, like her, know the feathered thing- the gentle joy of a chosen uncertainty. The real magic of this fickle world is in the nearly real, the perhaps, the “could be” of what an unbound life can offer. To describe herself, she’s left with words like “once was” and “not quite,” words that hint at incompleteness. They mean that she’s losing, or gaining something – what exactly, she’s not sure of yet. Perhaps it is her sense of place; she’s lost belonging and gained becoming. She’s not quite clear how far along she is in this process or how it will end – whether it will come quickly or be wicked away, gust by gust. She doesn’t quite know yet, what it means to claim this place. She catches glimpses maybe – in reading the comforting familiarity in gray days, and yet a familiar sadness when they go on for too long. Her sense of searching, for both purpose and simplicity lies in the transparency of these gray days. Each cloud, metaphoric, becomes a way to explain, without saying much, what she loves and now looks for, maybe even expects from life now. Trying to define herself, but each day, defying yesterday’s definition, soon she will be bare. Each day less and less recognizable, from the person she was before. Looking back, looking forward, her shadow always ahead of her, she, always fumbling to catch up with it.

4/21/13

2013-04-21T18:18:00.000-07:00

And there he was, pressed up against me, bone to bone, flesh to flesh, blood to blood, and a heartbeat that pressed so firmly into mine, it became as one..

4/11/13 Trading

2013-04-11T16:39:00.000-07:00

I didn’t notice how quiet winter was until spring came along. Last night, I fell asleep to birds chirping, and this morning, I woke up to more of the same.
Since the frenzy of winter has now come and gone, a funny sort of quiet has settled over my life. It is the quiet of two quiet people smiling at each other over steaming cups of coffee. It is the quiet of a corner house at the end of the street.
It is the quiet of working hard, mostly, or of waiting and watching for more freelance work to come along, to then, work longer and harder still. You can count on the gentle clacking of keyboard keys and the clicking of my mouse at any point during the daylight hours. Sometimes the hum of the dishwasher or the rumble of the dryer kicks in with a sort of baseline, offering signs of domesticity. ( that I still have, and haven’t forgotten how to use)
It is the quiet of a few plants nearly dying every few weeks and then graciously coming back to life when I remember to water them. Much to my surprise, a certain hand-me-down orchid has been quietly sprouting tendrils right and left despite my careful neglect.
It’s the sort of quiet I’ve always wished for, and it’s even lovelier than I’d imagined. I use to be in a noisy house where the TV was always on and voices were always raised. I wanted nothing more than to shut out the constant tumult of life lived loudly, but the sounds always seeped in through the cracks and boomeranged off the walls. I hoped very much that one day, I would trade in all that noise for a quiet place to read and rest, to write and work, to love and be loved. I have traded.

4/08/13 The Art of Editing Life

2013-04-08T12:30:00.001-07:00

I guess there comes a point in our lives when we realize that everything we own tells our story. There maybe sometimes comes yet another moment when you can’t look at all your stuff without feeling all of your yesterdays puddle and threaten... to flood if you dare look down. For me, I have tried not to look down in months.
I’m packing up my life again very soon, and I’m struggling with my story. I’ve too much stuff I don’t need and too big a tale to tell and some very sad chapters that I don’t want to remember and don’t want to forget, and it’s getting me to edit,( my life that is.) And all that reminds me of unhappy yesterdays, is being packed up and brought to the trash. And I will then walk out to the trash and throw away those ugly precious memories while I swallow sobs and look up at the stars, trying like crazy to keep each of those yesterdays with all my others.

4/7/13 A Little Broken

2013-04-07T18:45:00.002-07:00

I was still a little broken; I hid it well, but deep down things weren’t peachy. I was also still a little lost. I felt the universe had forced my hand and I didn’t understand why. I was afraid to examine the feelings too closely, so I shuttered them deep within and ignored the fact that I couldn’t speak about the fact that life, my life, had gone up in a cloud of smoke. I ignored the fact that I wasn’t sleeping well and, at times, barely breathing.
Then, I settled in to this strange new existence and accepted that maybe things do always happen for a reason, and maybe this was the reason. Maybe I needed time. Maybe I needed the time to slowly heal and accept, and then I needed the time after that to celebrate and see the possibilities again. I needed mornings spent sipping coffee, and evenings spent writing thoughts on a page. Filling page after page with smudges and stained thought. Later, I wrote in my journal that I felt “removed, relaxed, a slight sick feeling in my stomach”. I did not cry, I noted proudly, until I was walking through the tunnel from the gate of my past life.
I stood mesmerized, holding the paper in my hand tightly, the one that held the power to allow me to move on, to get over the delusions of life. I didn’t know it at the time, but I found peace in that piece of paper, a sense of quiet inner security. A calmness I had never felt, or shared before, until now. A peace in the ending.......

3/27/13 Another's Pain

2013-03-27T16:43:00.002-07:00

I enter easily into another's pain, a trait I can only attribute not to some outstanding moral fiber, but rather to my adult life, which has trained my mind and soul to inhabit the skin of another in a way that little else can. I remember the scene now, as if it were yesterday, as he brandished the coffee mug, hurling it across the room into the sink, leaving cup smashed and coffee dripping down the kitchen wall. The vision still sears in my head, as heavy fists hurled against the grey door frame of the bathroom. I'm sure I cried. I remember shaking my head and asking no - one in particular, why? As I write this I turn around and see on my shelf the faded scrapbook that contains the tattered "I'm sorry, it won't happen again," notes, tucked into a nearby shabby box are the ones that didn't fit into the scrapbook. And, together, they make me wonder, would he ever have stopped at all, if I had not been the one to stop it, by finally leaving. To finally end the trail of "I'm sorry, and this will be the last time, I promise "....... a trail of notes that seemed to continue connecting like the cars of a locomotive that went on forever. Like every other bit of my life, it has effected me for the rest of my life. It is only now that I have begun to stand still with my own memories, re - visiting a time in my life that is on a constant loop in some recess of my brain. Not that I obsess. It is just that the past is a big part of the present...sometimes memories brightly flare up, sometimes they quietly recede to the background. I feel myself fading, being pulled into a dark tunnel that was easier to stay in than consciousness. Here's another memory. He asks why I am mocking his favorite sports team. Before my confusion fully set into an organized thought he punched the wall next to my head. Domestic Violence weren't concepts I knew of yet. Because this was the most normal thing that happened everyday all the time. Each crisis was distinct and discreet behind closed doors. Obviously there were distinctions, but I never readily identified them. As we once upon a time knew, Domestic Violence creeps in silence. It is about power and control, and it often reaches death, for those that don't get out. I have my faults, some are known fully to me, and many, I am sure, are felt more expansively by others. But, Domestic Violence is not about faults, it is a a surge of physical power to control, a bullying that goes on often behind closed doors.

3/20/13

2013-03-20T14:33:00.002-07:00

Out of breath, she had to lean against the side of her car, he pulled her closer, feverishly rushing his hands down her familiar corridors, belongings that were not yet his for the taking. She picked up her key, fumbled with the lock. She was too nervous, he too impatient. It took her a moment to work it. Finally, the lock clicked, and they slipped inside with their secret. As he held her hand in the grasp of his, she felt hope grow, like a mad, wild plant she could no longer tame. The windows became fogged and heated, as the sheriff looked at them with surprise.....

3/4/13

2013-03-04T08:30:00.002-08:00

Finding a way to heal what seems totally broken is the precise imperfections of life and relationships, again and again, doubt is a creature that lurks at our door, and, again and again, we all fear it.

2/27/13 Life is a Choice

2013-02-27T16:42:00.001-08:00

The things of which I am most proud in my life have required a combination giving it up to the fates and making the arduous decisions of a warrior. It gives me great solace to imagine that I am the author of my own future and that I don’t have to wait for “blessings” to be happy. The good news is that means we can all change our lives for the better . . . it simply starts with choosing to believe that it’s feasible. I am not so sure I believe in destiny. I think what I believe in is making better choices. I battle with the notion that things are in some way preordained. The concept of life unfurling " just as it should be," and according to some magical plan beyond my comprehension, sounds truly amazing, but, better choices along the way really rolls the plan along.

2/26/13 February Go Away

2013-02-26T16:29:00.003-08:00

By now, you know how much I love beginnings. And sometimes I can deal with endings too, because they usually lead to new beginnings. In-betweens, however, are impossible to wrap my head around, and after watching Fifty - one Februaries come and go, I am certain that February is nothing but an endless in-between. Growing up in New York, I learned from a very young age that February meant still stuffing yourself into your puffy winter gear long after that winter gear has lost its luster. In fact, by February everything has lost its luster. The snow is no longer magical—it’s just cold and very persistent. There must be some important reason for February to exist—and if anyone can think of one, I hope you’ll let me know. Otherwise, I will be eagerly ticking off its last few days in hopeful anticipation of a very early spring. (And I do mean, a VERY early spring, please!)

2/23/13 Future

2013-02-24T18:48:00.000-08:00

The sound of the future arriving, turns out, makes no sound at all....it comes in totally silent, and then, there you are....in a place you never thought you'd be, or now, would ever want to leave....like mixing paint, you can't ever un - mix it, like breaking an egg shell, you can't ever put the egg back together again, can't ever put the cork back in the opened bottle of champagne, BUT, breathless, even with your coat buttoned up the wrong way, you can arrive at the future, even, with tears in your eyes.......part of her feels, part of her even knows it for certain.....

2/19/13 Uncertainty

2013-02-19T13:25:00.002-08:00

Uncertainty is one of those mixed emotion words. As I look forward at the next few months followed by the extending void of the rest of my life uncertainty inspires my mid - life youth, risk-taking, adventure-seeking, chance, and jumping in head-first. Its less satisfying other side provokes anxiety and worry, stalling forward momentum. However, admittedly, there is no escaping either side, as a thoughtful friend gently reminded me, almost everything in life is uncertain. Someone, clearly more comfortable with uncertainty than myself, stated, “uncertainty touches the best of what is human in us.” I feel it grabbing at what is most human about me, but perhaps not always the best part of me.
The past is past and the future is not-yet-known, and, really, that is all I have
to roll with, as I slowly roll along, and life unfolds.

2/18/13 Partners

2013-02-18T11:58:00.000-08:00

Firm believer, that, at any stage of life, it is important to find your person.  To find your beacon. Find your partner. Find your path. Just one person, who believes you are not crazy to want to be a _____________. A person who holds your magic. And shares in it.
Someone who never turns off the light?
And there he was, pressed up against me, bone to bone, flesh to flesh, blood to blood, and a heartbeat that pressed so firmly into mine, it became one......and I put my hand against my heart, and remembered, who you choose for a partner, always matters, it even changes your life.

Take a Moment 2/17/13

2013-02-17T16:34:00.002-08:00

When I get run-down or particularly stressed out, the sunset is always a good reminder to breathe deep and let it all go. I like to stand outside, if its nice enough, or at a window and just be still and soak in the amazing beauty. It never ceases to soothe my soul. If you’re feeling stretched a little thin, I recommend the same. And if you can’t find a sunset of your own, or need the peace right now, here’s one of mine. Breathe deep and be grateful my friends. Life is a lovely gift.

2/15/13 One door closing

2013-02-15T08:39:00.002-08:00

The sound of one door closing
I’ve never liked the word “closure.” I know what people think they mean when they say it—this relic word from a self-help era gone by. The concept of closure seems almost darling with its naiveté and inspirational quality. In my experience, if you are employing this term, it is in the context of searching for answers and resolution to the wholly chaotic and mysterious. Human relating is sloppy and the sad fact is that much of it never ultimately makes sense. Whether relationships are historic or enduring; whether they are romantic, familial or with friends . . . chances are you might never totally get what they were as you look back or how to operate successfully within them moving forward. And this, I have found, is actually good news.
At the beginning of the end, I was confronted with the fallacy of seeking tidy understanding when it comes to other humans. I sat in a therapist’s office, where I had gone week after week, unpacking stories of conflict and misery. I was living with a man (my husband) who never really liked himself, who never really knew himself, and who didn’t appear to even particularly like me most of the time. I spent countless hours and too large a ratio of my salary on parsing this mess, and paying co – pays. I’m not sure whether my therapist had just had it with me or whether she saw that I was ready to be nudged along, but when I said something about needing “closure” in order to walk away, she simply said, ”Why?” (a question, I later learned, you almost never should have to ask).
I had taken for granted that this is what adults did in relationships. I assumed the idea was to make a careful, rational selection of a partner, ride the arc of the relationship to some logical conclusion and then, if need be, part ways with a mutual understanding of the facts. It goes without saying that I never made any kind of clear-eyed choice other than believing it was good for me to be with this man, even though virtually every moment with him was one baffling disconnect after another. So, damned if I wasn’t going to try and exert some control over its’ ending, some needed point of closure for myself.
What I learned from her “Why?” and the succession of “Whys” that followed—pursuing my train of thought until I ran out of answers, (“Why do you need to make sense of it?” “Why does it matter what people will think?” ad infinitum.)—Was that most of the need for closure was about him or other people. I was completely engrossed in his behavior, what it all meant, whether or not he was capable of change, what was to be said about me (to whom?) if I just gave up on this person I had claimed to love. It was also a way to remain perpetually engaged in a relationship that I felt terrified of ending, yet, terrified at the same time of staying in. What a brilliant excuse for staying stuck if you just continue to hang in there until you make your way out of the labyrinth! Except that almost nobody emerges to see the light of day when they are entangled like this with another person.
Like most people, true lightning bolt moments are incredibly rare in my consciousness. This happened to be one of them. I felt the gears shift in my brain and a single thought shoved all others aside—“There is no reason why.” There was no explanation THERE WOULD NEVER BE AN EXPLANATION for why he acted the way he did or why I felt the need to spend many foundational years working on the calculus proof of this person. The very instant I accepted that closure wasn’t necessary, wasn’t even possible, I had no other choice but to leave him for good.
It was beautiful. I don’t say this so much as an indictment of that particular relationship as much as acknowledging the liberating psychic gift it was. Once I realized that full and true understanding, especially when I thought I was embroiled in love, wasn’t critical or all that promising, I was much more free to go. Paradoxically, this also gave me the best chance at finding myself, a needed point, before I put foot before foot, and before, I could have ever be hopeful of finding another. I am not sure what exact transformation took place, or on which morning run, or evening walk, but comfortable and peaceful the transformation has become. I now welcome the future and the hopefulness it has encompassed back into my life. When the question arises, to stay, or to go, the answer is always to go, and sooner than later is always the right allotted answer to any timeframe. Wasted time becomes wasted years, and those years, you never get back. They become lost, for good.

1/31/13 Grief, Love and Life!

2013-01-31T09:29:00.001-08:00

Grief, Love, and Life !

As far as thieves go, grief is the greatest one. She robs us of the people we love, but—perhaps most achingly—she zaps our ability to imagine the future. Lose a place, a person, or a love and, suddenly, measurements of time become irrelevant. Grief warps time; she renders our plans for next week and dreams for the next vacation incongruous. When we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.
Imagining the future is an act of boldness. The wishful imagination of a future with being alive: a wanting, a living, an expectation of something more.
My discontent with grief comes from its blocking my boundless want. By drawing strict lines between my living and those whom I have lost, grief casts the world in harsh light. She makes it impossible to believe in forever. Instead, she injects a heinous pragmatism into sentiments that would rather be unadulterated by it. My only antidote to that has been to love – the kind of love that floods every crack and fills the vacuum of loss with the promise of togetherness. Feeling something strong enough to carve into a brick, with all the world serving as my witness. The triumph of love over loss, of affection over grief, of dreaming over pain.

1/30/13 Home

2013-01-30T15:27:00.000-08:00

Against my better judgment, I went out that evening anyway, celebrating the release of a magazine’s newest issue in a cavernous, low-lit bar, feasting on Venezuelan sandwiches and guacamole into the early hours of the morning. That night, on my snowy trek, I felt as comfortable in my surroundings as I’d ever felt anywhere. I felt confident. Even up to my ankles in snow, even in boots a size too large, even lost in a whiskey fog, I felt safe. Sturdy.
And I found my way home, a trail of footprints behind me........

1/28/13 Reclamation

2013-01-28T18:02:00.000-08:00

I’ve never liked the word “closure.” I know what people think they mean when they say it—this relic word from a self-help era gone by. The concept of closure seems almost darling, with its naiveté, it’s inspirational quality. In my experience, if I am employing this term, it is in the context of searching for answers and resolution to the wholly chaotic and mysterious.

How do we reclaim spaces and moments that we used to exist in and define ourselves by?

1/23/13 New Year Begins

2013-01-23T09:19:00.000-08:00

This is a momentary chance to take stock of where I’ve been and where I want to go.
I rang in the New Year this year with a grateful heart, filled to bursting with amazement at everything that has come into my life in the last twelve months: This time last year, I could not have imagined the wealth of happiness that 2012 would bring. Now, in retrospect, I am awed.
As the weeks of December ticked by, I found myself thinking about my hopes and dreams for the New Year. I am a lover of goals and a maker of resolutions. Still, as I pondered on 2013, I felt stumped. What could I resolve to do in a year that would bring so much change, so many unknowns? While this year is still young, I will be welcoming a new person into my life, adding a completely new element into my otherwise familiar existence. I just want this to be the year of deep, deep thinking, deep living, deep breathing, deep adventure. I don’t want to miss a second; I don’t want to get to the end of the road and regret the times I wasn’t present for the moments that counted.
And that, in the end, sums up my sole resolution for this New Year:
Deep.
Be there, wherever “there” may be.
I don’t know, here on the threshold of the coming year, what 2013 will bring. Like most years, I imagine it will carry its share of pain along with the joys, and I’m sure that keeping my temper and equilibrium after one too many nights spent worrying about it all will be a challenge. There will probably be moments of exhaustion, of bleary-eyed apathy, of downright frustration.
But there will be, hopefully, so many moments of personal absolute beauty, too.
And I don’t want to miss a single one of those moments, so I am going to breath deep, even after my daily yoga session has ended. Give myself a little grace when I inevitably fall short.

1/21/13 Kisses

2013-01-21T10:37:00.003-08:00

I was never the girl you might have found slathered in mud and eating watermelon in the rain. I was the girl who littered her apartment with candles and romanticized about the how, the when, and the why. It feels like the great unknown all over again, just when I thought I knew something, I realize I have no blessed idea. His kisses are innocent. They contain no motive. No history. They simply are. Kissing is a game to him. It's a call and answer. We will never be each others whole world, but for a while, we will be each others everything.