Each of us exists only in relation to others — the way light refracted needs an eye to appear to be a rainbow, the way a cat is not dead until you dig it up and see for yourself

I know thoughts are ever-flowing, temporary and timely and a lot of the time, wrong and misleading – especially in their perceived strength, potency ultimately unknowable.

Right now, I am thinking about moving toward mountains

I am feeling like, after trusting the wind who came to me disguised as you, I need grounding and I am feeling like the only element who can ground me

is the earth

I need mountains

like I need friends

I am thinking about the importance of my friendships, the strength of the ones I have and how to foster new ones, too.

I am convinced I need friends and mountains for the same reasons

To be held

To be seen

To be contained

To be defined

As in, they are the Tupperware and I am whatever floats inside or

they are the walls and I am

whatever floats inside,

I guess

there are things you would have never said or done had your friends not been there and you always thought that your friends were just being themselves but the truth, I think, is that your friend would not have done that one thing if it weren’t for you and your eyes and your thoughts either

in this way and so many others, we live in the flicker*

We live in this ever-changing, different-from-every-angle reality

I need friends I can trust in order to let down my own guard; the barriers I have up within myself, against myself, can be softened by true and honest friendships. I can only do so much softening on my own.

Summer here, in a place with no mountains, is not yet in full swing and already reeks of a lonely flatness

and to have the one friend who is your compassion embodied, the one who asks you to see yourself in your accusations of others

and to have the one friend who is your hardest self, the one who is take-no-shit and loves to hate

and to have the one friend who is honest to a fault

and to have the one who says yes to everything

and to have the one who can always provide a laugh

and to have the friend who thinks they are better than you and is right; the one who doesn’t remember the things you remember about them

and to then be that friend to someone else — it is the way each person you touch is a different person as soon as you touch them

and i mean touch, yes, but I also just mean

paths cross and your lives kiss one another and your existences brush against each other

and so you touch and as soon as you do, the standards change and you are held in a different container and you shift and adapt to whatever contrainsts dictated by the dimensions of that container may be

the walls don’t feel like mountains here

the brick, the flat pavement, doesn’t catch sound the same way jagged rock and round boulders do. Walls go up and up and up, here. But they don’t embrace anything — they can blind you, shade you — it’s almost like they would never catch you if you fell. They would certainly never laugh at your falls or jokes.

These flat walls could never let out a cry, no.

I’m struggling to find a sense of place at the moment. My own days feel long while I feel time moving fast for everyone else — my friends are for telling me that they’ve been there before and, trust me, you’ll learn about yourself there.

Where you are.

And so I am urged toward doing — what can I do what hobbies can I try what might they teach me about myself because obviously there must be a purpose or else what on earth is the moral of the story

but

drawing it all in reverse will never really work — sometimes it must just feel nice to wade into the water with no intention of swimming laps or surfing waves — there must be space for feminine wisdom here

staying sitting relaxing enjoying waiting

in the wading

so maybe it’s water

and the stars are saying it’s fire

and I was so sure it was wind

but I still feel called to the mountains

and to my friends

Until You Know Better

Loving-kindness meditation 1 million times

How can I be a friend to myself? What comment/observation do I wish to hear from a friend?

Great Artists Steal

I just listened to my first “ologies” podcast episode

My friend told me that her friend told her that she would have loved to have just seen her in love — she wishes that she could have been there just to witness that version of her

*Joseph Conrad, again! we live in the flicker — we only get a brief moment of illumination

An original poem of mine, speaking of illumination:

THERE

It was four o’clock
On the dot
At the table 
Outside the house
Here 
it is on Ohio
That the hill is illuminated 
Yes the street named after the state
Just like the range named after the girl
Or the flower, actually
There are streets named after flowers here, too
And we must gaze at the same moon
It’s just that 
A sunset with no clouds 
Is a sky with no mountains
Nothing to catch the light cast 
A person with no people

When there is nowhere to sit
Without risk of malaria
One must keep moving
One must walk the setting sun
and call clouds mountains