Looking for Wonderful

I wrote a list of five main projects I wanted to complete while taking a year away from teaching. What I have learned is the order of what I had suspected would constitute my daily hours has changed. Grasshopper is learning to listen. …………………the rest of this blog should be blank yet the cocoons still needs to be unveiled butterfly has sprung new wings.

The internal search for peace took me to church, I mean literally to church. I wake with anticipation of darkness to suppress racing thoughts. Pray until my mind is bursting with lists and walk along hard packed paths unwinding. Reflection, presence, contemplation, deliberation are taking me on wild adventures. People ask for obvious trips…..those less drug induced……and without a plane, train, or automobile don’t register on the sex, violence, and Nazi scale. I’ve gone further in 6 months, clocked more mileage a

Forgiveness of myself has increased. Making conscious choices to reach out at every chance to those I didn’t heed, that didn’t transmit. Beating down demons that 30 years of routine have ingrained memory is hard to recall. I have speeded up to slow down. Prototypes are my friend. Listening records stories. Observing humans for their gifts, only their gifts, leaving pain for those in search. Finding truth when asked what I am most proud of. Not any accolades what others have shown me of themselves, their vulnerability to risk all has soared my gratitude and brought me to my knees.

Asking others who they are, what their passionate about when no one else is around, listening to the pause……then pure delight in someone truly being interested in who they are. No letters, no cards, simply joy.

Blinded by fear, hearing voices that push creativity into the recesses of graves are fading. They were the norm for a time and now free there are days I allow my mind to ruminate at how entombed I’d become.

Appreciation is what allows me to live each like it is the last.

My father frail in body said, “With the time I have left I want people to know I am open to them” I recall my grandmother telling me she was ready to go. My father cried in my arms for hours. Now here he is knowing there are more years behind than ahead, the raw exposure calms me before my head can truly grasp the loss of hearing his voice daily. I record our conversations.

Wisdom throws laughter in the heat of a moment drawing sagaciousness from still waters.

The silence that surrounds me shrouds me to hear what is truly there.