construction

Life is too short for me to waste it on the superficial.

I want to become intimate with the natural world. I never want to be boxed in or trapped in my own neuroses and selfishness. I want to experience the land and the soil, the skin of the earth and the birds perched beyond reach. I want to know the beasts and the insects' wings. I want to fly without leaving the ground. The eyes can soar with the right perspective.

May the red sand and limestone purify my soul. And it will, and it will.

I have been stuck for far too long. Maybe this limbo period is preparing me for what's next. Maybe everything in me needed to hibernate in preparation for some "great awakening." Lord, let's hope so.

I have confidence in the Universe, but I also must do my own part. It begins with me being fearless and leaping and trusting and all of those other cliche, self-helpy words. But it's true!

Fear fear fear and doubt doubt doubt have stopped me my whole life from doing anything and everything that I have wanted. It seems as though I have 100% of the time chosen the safe, practical way. The way that won't rock any kind of boat on any body of water. I don't even get close to the water, you know? And it achieves nothing except for a boatload of regret.

So I guess I do sometimes love the superficial. I love the REI, the Subarus, the flannel. I love the big dogs and organic gardens and smell of summer skin. I love the freckles and the meals over camping stoves. I love the wildflowers that tattoo the desert floor.

I want time to name the mountains (but the names will remain sacred, a secret kept between me and the rocks). I want to sleep, again, on a sand dune in June. I want to read the canyons like a book, but from bottom to top, not left to right. I want to be left to write about what's left of what's right.

And what's right to me is the crooked trunk of the juniper tree. The sand that sinks into the wrinkles of my knees as I kneel to pray to the spider web that just trapped the fly. The silk that weaves seamlessly through this moment and through this lifetime. Let it not be ignored or hidden by various screens and distractions.

The strands can shine in the sun brilliantly once we remove the clouds.