Lessons in Navigation

There was a strange perfection to your words
and the way your arms held me, solid as oak boughs
I've been climbing, searching for the sky.

Oh if I could, for a minute set down
the fleeting, unbound wind for steady tides
Perhaps I would find my way to you.

But I set my compass
To the far off promise of horizons
Instead of the incalculable, stagnant stars

And I took measure by the growing stalks of daffodil
And not the ancient and unchanging rock
I should have known to trust.

It is a heavy thing to carry,
this heart that pulls at the sinews
and veins that tether it

It is a heavy thing to carry
This heart that yearns to leave
This heart that longs to be loved.

Revelation

"So throw away those lamentations, we both know them all too well.

If there's a book of jubilation, we'll have to write it for ourselves."

-Josh Ritter

Headlights

This is certainly not love. Not longing, exactly, no broken hearts. Perhaps heartache, perhaps the still more dangerous heart hope. I used to believe that love was a destination at the end of  a freeway, straight and swift as the blurred Autobahns of last Spring. But I believe there are more twists and potholes than suspected. Most love lanes have already been patched up and re-paved, but their flaws can't be erased because you can feel them every time you drive those routes again.

 I was just a dead end street on yours. One you turned down anyways, by accident or perhaps because there is freedom to be found in getting lost. But I am not your destination, not the moment where you turn off the ignition and your body sinks into the joy of solid ground again, heavy as a heartbeat. I am not love. But I was part of the journey, and I have to keep reminding myself that that was enough. This is enough.

My happiness is, after all, a matter of self-determination. I lay claim to it as a girl who's never let her joy depend on anything her legs couldn't reach, anything her hands couldn't hold. Good luck on your road. Someday I'll be driving by on my own, parallel, leaving only the rush of wheels on road and the blur of speeding headlights to remind you I was here.

Until then,

-M

Of Resolutions

It's almost Spring here. Every day, you can feel it coming closer, curling out of the ground with the cherry tree blossoms and the first of the daffodils. I keep waking at night to the sound of rain, and I can smell it in the saturated breeze. I never sleep with the window closed these nights.

 At the beginning of this year, I made some New Year's Resolutions, as we who are never tired of hoping are wont to do. One of my main goals was balance; I need to be able to keep an equilibrium between all those things in my life which are important to me.

I know I need to pay more attention to school, to apply myself with a more rigorous attitude, to live out my potential, to earn my scholarship, to prove myself. But it's hard, in the bewitching time between seasons when every fibre of me longs to run from the responsibilities that hold me, as tiresome and necessary as an anchor. I will tell you that over the past week I have filled my days with bluegrass music in cafes at night, with frisbee games and homemade pizza. I've woken early to spend hours in the forest doing restoration, and slept late after nights of laughing and singing and absurdity. I've spent more time than I'd care to recount on daydreams and read too long into the night. I've eaten cookies I didn't deserve, just to reward myself for being joyful, and watched movies of faraway places from a pile of blankets and pillows.

I really do need to crack down and methodically cross off the tasks of my ever increasing to-do list. And soon. But to spend time on what makes you happy is a skill unto itself, one not enough work is put into. You don't have to look far into the headlines to realize that simply to be happy is an accomplishment of astronomic proportions. The world can never have enough joy. To find your own, and add it to that larger sum is a noble resolution indeed.

-M

Baptism

Welcome!

I have always been entranced by fresh new pages; I've always loved beginnings. I will tell you now, there are no answers to be found here, just stories and happy folly. Just the reminder of senses that I too often forget. The smell of salty Island seaweed, the taste of blackberries at the tail end of summer, the sound of crisp golden leaves, the sight of purple hazy mountains at dusk, the bittersweet way wild geese are always leaving and the feel of early winter rain, like some holy baptism.

These are some things which I hold dear, and I offer them up to you, because I have heard that what you love best in the world is better still when shared.

I hope this finds you laughing. I hope this finds you happy. I hope this finds you blessed.

After all, there is not enough room between the heart, the head and the hands for anything but joy.

- A hopeful heartholder