...I looked up, opened my heart, and the Universe said, "This, this is your truth"

Storms.  What beauty they bring to the world.  Literally, metaphorically, emotionally, mentally, physically...ad infinitum.  There must be a reason that the crux of the chaos is called "the eye of the storm".  We all know what greatness, truth, and vulnerability the eye symbolizes.

It was last night when I was thinking about storms.  I was sitting up on my bed, back against the wall, toiling over a big decision that had to be made.  I had been so saturated in the process for several hours that my brain literally hurt.  I'm not the headache type, so this was odd and I knew that the best thing I could do was rest my mind for the remaining hours of the evening.

set my head back, slightly stretching the front of my neck, and invited the silence.  If a thought drifted through, I would watch it go by and dissolve.  I suppose you could call it a sort of meditation.  [Funny, I initially wrote "medication"...Freudian Slip?].  Rain was falling furiously onto the cement below my window.  And then I felt it...that pang for Spring; a pang I have been feeling a lot recently.

I realized what it is I appreciate most about Spring, perhaps my favorite season.  Not just the rain, but the storms.  People often complain about April and how 'miserable' it is, but I think just the opposite.  When the wind is powerfully whipping around every building corner, rain coming at you horizontally, umbrellas flipping inside-out, ripples dancing in the continuously growing puddles...that's when you know everything is coming to life.  Yes, yes, true.  BUT, it is the post-storm atmosphere in which I relish.  Everything is wet, the street is still silent, hesitant to bustle quite yet, people push their hoods back and look up.  And then there's the smell and the fresh crispness to the air.  Mud, bark, earth, cement...there are those few minutes, that gap in time, between vitality of the storm, it's halt, and the reigniting of human perambulation.  It's those few moments when you feel like you must tread softly, hold your breath, honor the magic.

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Speaking of magical things, streets, etc.  Here is a little clip of me dancing in the streets of Paris ::sigh::  I believe a European trip is necessary sometime in the near(ish) future...




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I want to share a Jack Gilbert poem. It was in The New Yorker today.


Waiting and Finding


While he was in kindergarten, everybody wanted to play
the tomtoms when it came time for that. You had to
run in order to get there first, and he would not.
So he always had a triangle. He does not remember
how they played the tomtoms, but he sees clearly
their Chinese look. Red with dragons front and back
and gold studs around that held the drumhead tight.
If you had a triangle, you didn’t really make music.
You mostly waited while the tambourines and tomtoms
went on a long time. Until there was a signal for all
triangle people to hit them the right way. Usually once.
Then it was tomtoms and waiting some more. But what
he remembers is the sound of the triangle. A perfect,
shimmering sound that has lasted all his long life.
Fading out and coming again after a while. Getting lost
and the waiting for it to come again. Waiting meaning
without things. Meaning love sometimes dying out,
sometimes being taken away. Meaning that often he lives
silent in the middle of the world’s music. Waiting
for the best to come again. Beginning to hear the silence
as he waits. Beginning to like the silence maybe too much.


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I would normally say something about the poem, but I'll allow the silence...

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I'm a lucky, lucky girl