clearly.

I can't seem to find the right frame of mind lately. When you're the sort of person who lives by routine and familiarity, and when that gets all thrown out, I guess the wires get crossed for awhile.

So tonight, I only want to tell you this one thing: there are a lot of different forms to beauty in this world. It isn't only a thing you see, it doesn't always make you catch your breath. Sometimes it's a group of women who are struggling with things you can't even imagine, but they care about each other and they love each other and they form a community. Sometimes that community is very beautiful. Sometimes it's looking down at the rug by the door and seeing one large pair of shoes next to one small pair of shoes. Sometimes seeing those shoes at home together is very beautiful. Sometimes loss and absence is beautiful because, in the loss, you are able to see what goodness and blessing you've had. And still have.

I saw a man in an important looking suit on Capitol Hill today. He was was sitting in the park. All of the benches were full, so he was sitting on the thick, low-hanging branch of a tree. Shiny shoes and jacket slung aside. He was rolling a cigarette. It was hot, but not in the shade where he sat.

And that was beautiful too.

more writing.

I'm always terrible at marking change in my life. My childhood journals are full of page after page of monotony, but the significant moments are curiously absent. On through my teenage years and college. I am inspired to write about the color of the leaves but incapable of writing when I move or fall in love or suffer a broken heart.

There is distant thunder tonight, the kind that sounds vaguely reminiscent of footsteps upstairs. The kind that makes you say in your head, over and over, Oh it's just the thunder. And it is mixing with some pre-holiday fireworks. And those are mixing with a small bit of rain. And that is mixing with cats racing up and down the stairs after me, tiny claws and feet on wood, skittering.

I moved last weekend to a new city. I started a new job. I took up with a good man who loves me. It was a big weekend.

I don't want to write about it because, in my old way, I can't conjure up the words. It's too much, or it means too much, or something. But I bargained with myself tonight: You can eat that second piece of cheese, but then you must writing something.

So I have done my part.

I'm sorry for another absence, but it couldn't be helped. I will be back again. Nearly one year ago, I resolved to write on this blog. I'm working on a goal list for this year. Bigger and better but mostly just more. More writing. More.

the grotesque hints at its own cure.

"But the grotesque hints at its own cure, the speculative creation otherwise known as 'hope.' We hope when the odds, no matter how good, are still that: odds, chance, a gamble in which the rules may change at any time, for any reason, with or without our acquiescence. We hope when we understand that circumstances are beyond our control, when will is not equal to effect, when we are not the subjects of a story but its objects. Hope isn't optimistic; it's the face of despair. My grandmother taught me that, not long before she died. 'Despair,' she said, was her favorite word. 'It's not a bad thing. It's a gift. A recognition.' It's the opposite of dread. Perception, not speculation. You accept the facts of your fate rather than reading them as evidence of a judgment or a moral. Some people might call that quitting."

- Jeff Sharlet (Born, Again)

broad arms.

There are times when there seems to be little to say. I know there's nothing to say, you reassure everyone. The path is long and you don't always know where it will lead you. The path is long and sometimes you must go it alone. The path is long and it is also very short.

I don't know terribly much about Natasha Trethewey, but that she is the new poet laureaute, comparatively young, and has something beautiful to say about patience and art.

"I turned to poetry to make sense of what had happened and started writing what I knew, even then, were really bad poems. It took me nearly 20 years to find the right language, to write poems that were successful enough to explain my own feelings to me and that might also be meaningful to others."

Love is good and compassion makes the broad arms that hold us all. I am quite guilty of forgetting that. Sometimes we need to be those arms and sometimes we need to let them hold us. Say I love you. Say it again, again, again, again, again. Never stop.

other home.

Over the course of one week, the course of my life has changed significantly. I knew it was coming, more or less, but it has taken a good few days to get my head around it. In three weeks, I'm moving to a new city. I'm going for a new job I'm thrilled about and a new life with someone I love. I will be leaving behind four years of friendship and good life in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts was my first other home. It was the first time I set out on my own and made a place in the world for myself, where the good grace of love and community found me and a family of people chose me. That is something beautiful and precious and difficult to let go of. But there is more of it out there and, after a lifetime of moving, I have at least learned the valuable lesson that you never really leave behind the people and places you've known. They are always a part of you. And the ones that matter, the ones that inspire you and make you stronger and better, those ones last.

For three years, I lived in a big house full of people, in the woods of Wellfleet, where there are also beaches and ponds and tourists and long, quiet winters. For those three years, once a week, 14 people sat around a table and had a meal together, cooked by two of us. Sometimes the meal was late and everyone sat in the living room, crabby, waiting, and watching Jeopardy. Sometimes the nights were warm and we sat outside at the long picnic table until the mosquitoes drove us in. Some of the meals were terrible - soggy grilled cheese sandwiches and giant pots of plain white noodles. Some of the meals were epic. There was always the threat of scarcity. When you cook for 14 people, there is always the danger of not making quite enough. Some weeks, I'd had a long day and I could barely tolerate the chatter and noise and press of bodies around the table. Other weeks, I sat down, looked around the table and saw family. I think I will carry forever the beauty of this group meal. The urgency of being together, on good days and bad, the necessity of connecting with the people in your life. The love of food and the gratitude for a gift.