Always Thinking Of You

"There is the watchman of the fire
That warms up my heart's desire.
There is the keeper of the lights
In my life's darkest nights."
---Sonja Nic Rafferty

Quite A View

It's not very often that I get to say that I can see the ocean from the house. Today, though, I can. It's only April and I'm on vacation. It won't be for long enough, but it is definitely something I needed. Just over the tree line outside the house, there is an ocean ready to take away my worries for a little while. The ferry ride over here, to my favorite place, was more therapeutic than usual. Maybe it was her presence, so sparkling and full of life no matter the circumstance.

Now, in the warmth of the sun streaming through the sky lights, I am content to write with my favorite radio station humming in the background. They seem to know what to play and when, like they're making sure my life has a good soundtrack every time i'm here. So as Jacob Dylan starts crooning through the house, all I can do is smile at the perfection of it all.

I made comment the other day that I would love to live here. I don't know if I could live here full time. I would worry that this place would lose the magic. That somehow, some of how I feel is because I am not here all the time. I would certainly like the freedom and finances to be able to come here when I feel like it. It is a goal i've had. It is, perhaps, a goal i will always have. I will fight for it to become some sort of reality, but I also know how far that reality is from my current situation.

Here I have no one to answer to about my problems. I have no one to reconcile with, no one to worry about pleasing but myself. In the kitchen making breakfast for seven people and somehow it's meditative. I cannot share or explain in, proper amounts of accuracy,
the sheer beauty of this place to me. To both my eyes and somehow to my soul, scattered and torn and still content on this island.

I guess that's why I come here. Here is where I feel the most complete. I mean, after all, it is quite a view.

Coming Around Again

The sunlight is hours away right now and still I look forward to it. I look forward to it because it means beginning again. I need this beginning. I have had so many false starts in the recent past. Places I thought were beginnings that did not turn out as I'd hoped. Life has certainly been throwing the curve balls lately.

Still, I see summer coming around again. I see Martha's Vineyard sunsets and warm rains. I can imagine the feeling of sweating in New England heat. I laugh now at the comments to come about how "I hope it gets cooler tomorrow."

Now is the time for embracing those things we've lost track of. Now is the time for rekindling and remembering. Now is the time to brush off winter's half-dazed hibernation and grab our lives firmly at the scruff of the neck and take control. Now is the time to get the tears out, the screams out, the sighs out like spring cleaning.

I want to see my own reinvention through internal eyes. I want to weep at beauty not at pain. I want to be strong enough to do the hardest thing in our lives. I will fight to be myself. Even when I am scared of who I may be, I want to embrace all I can be, not let it go wasted into oblivion.

The sunlight is hours away and the moonlight comforts me. The cool breeze rolling over my window sill is urging me to crawl under the remaining blankets and fall asleep with the night air all around me. So I will say my wishes and drift off with a smile on my face tonight. Because tonight I know that nothing was forgotten. Tonight, in my dreams, i'll be dancing.

Juggling re-Act

Round, strong, never moving
Relationships worth it, stronger, deeper
Tossed together, never easy
Adding more, we're all ok
All we have is time to love
The final ball will never come
You'll never be shakey with us to support you
Together we can handle it all
You've never dropped us, just let us bounce
Pick us up we'll always be here
We'll learn together
We'll fail together
We'll love together
And when it's too hard
And all you want to do is run...

...run to us.

Letter Six - December 23, 1903

...But when you notice that it is vast, you should be happy; for what (you should ask yourself) would a solitude be that was not vast; there is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear, and almost everyone has hours when he would gladly exchange it for any kind of sociability, however trivial or cheap, for the tiniest outward agreement with the first person who comes along, the most unworthy. . . . But perhaps these are the very hours during which solitude grows; for its growing is painful as the growing of boys and sad as the beginning of spring. But that must not confuse you. What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours - that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grown-ups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn't understand a thing about what they were doing.

---Rainer Marie Rilke

Forgotten

At these moments in my life I am the most open to the possibility that my mind can achieve. I read the stress in your words, the stress in your voice. I felt you seeing reality in those words. It stung me. To think you saw so little of reality in days past. Days I remember so well. Days you seem to have all but forgotten.

I said things to you that I have said to so few people. I will never dance there again. The waterfall will end and I will not be there to see it. I gave you something that you don't realize you have. I loved you and trusted you and married you in dreams at night. I saw our children in your eyes and our future in your smile.

Still, it feels like a dream. There are vivid memories of your lips on mine, of your body against me. There are so many woven, beautifully tangled threads that make up this scattered quilt of memory. Somehow though, for you it is forgotten. Or, maybe even hidden, pushed into a corner of existence you will not touch as the future threatens to sweep control out from under your feet.

In all those things, though, what I gave you was myself. Completely. I was yours for the taking, the destroying, the loving and the hating. I never had malice, I never had anger. I forgave you for everything you would ever do the moment I met you.

I loved you.
No.
I love you.

To a depth even shadows dare dwell. A place where endless is not enough to explain the amount I have cared for you. A place where I can truly express the joy and utter despair of my life with you, my life because of you.

In that place I hope one thing. A single thought stretching in a hundred and sixteen directions with one purpose. Hoping, praying, wishing that you have not forgotten.

In Truth

Only moments ago i was crying into my pillow. Crying because I hadn't said it to you, but whispered it afterward like some high school romance. I know I could. I also know I would have cried it to you and not just said it, calmly, softly, gently, as I meant it. So I'm sorry for speaking of truth to you and then not telling you the simplest truth I have.

I know you understand. Even now that we are separate I know I'll never truly be alone. It's almost unfair to say i'm lonely to you. I hope you know I do not mean to degrade your presence in the very depths of who I am and who I've become because of you.

I don't think I could have ever said enough to explain the feeling. Still you knew it was there. You know it still is. I will never find understanding like yours again. So, in my darker times, I lament losing you, lament the decisions i've made, we've made. And I cry and sob like a child and somehow smile through a constant rain of tears.

In truth, I said I loved you after I hung up the phone.