"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
Emerson

Connections

...so I did it. I posted a photo of myself and filled in all the blanks about my relationship status and my interests and I emailed some friends and it all began. The invitations came in as quickly as I sent them out and all of a sudden I was exposed on the top of a hill with nothing to separate me from these strangers that now knew what my favorite book was. I felt very vulnerable and very fearful. How had I become part of this wide net of people that I hardly knew? How had my identity been compromised? It was through the genial, welcoming atmosphere of the Internet. Come one, come all, publish your picture, tell us some things about you, and we'll hook you up with more friends than you could ever wish for! Sell your everlasting soul to the masses and you too can have over 200 friends!

No, that's not the way I work. That's not the way I establish relationships. That's not the way I interact with people. I am getting ready to write two letters of thanks and they won't be emailed, they will be handwritten and sent with a stamp to the recipients. That is the way I work. That is the way I establish my self in this world. Not by writing on an imaginary wall, not by pressing a button and saying "confirm as friend". No one has 99 friends. No one can sustain that many relationships at once. It is impossible. We can divide ourselves up into many pieces but at some point the pieces are so small that they become only a picture on a page, only the writing on a Christmas card envelope, only a mention once every few years, only.....

I hit a different button this time. I pressed the button that said "deactivate". And I felt an immense relief. My friends were back where they were supposed to be, in my circle, within my arms, on the other end of the phone at midnight crying, laughing in the dark at the movies, sharing my life and my smiles and my frowns. They didn't need a "connection" to get to me. They only needed to call out my name and there I would appear.

We are too far away from each other as it is. We let things get in the way of a simple conversation. We don't reach out with our hands and invite camaraderie. We don't write letters anymore. We mistrust the Post Office but put all our trust in this Internet of ours, in this World Wide Web. And yes, letters get lost, and computers crash. But shared experience, shared words never fade from memory if they are sincere. Bring me some sincerity and a glass of iced tea. Bring me a porch swing and a box of Nilla wafers to share with you. I'd like to sit a spell. I'd like to know how your tomatoes are growing this year and what you've just finished reading and can't get out of your mind. I'd like to hear you tell me about your grandfather and I'd like to tell you about my niece and nephew.

We've lost touch with each other and are using poorly constructed webs to make us feel as though we are still connected somehow. There is no substitute for real friendship. A photo and a few words don't satisfy me. Why do they satisfy you? What makes me your friend? The push of a button and you are allowed into my world? What happened to commonalities? What happened to attraction and likability? It seems rather sad to me that we have come to a place where it takes these false networks to keep us together. The world has gotten too big, or we have gotten too busy. Either way, we need to figure out a way to find each other again. I tell you what--next time we talk you give me your address and I'll drop by the next time I'm in the neighborhood and we can have coffee and visit. Would that work? If I'm never in your neighborhood I'll call you on a Saturday and we can talk for a bit, catch up, learn some new things about each other. How's that? Now we can be real friends. Now we can share secrets and loves and sorrows and joys and scrapes and jelly doughnuts! Wow! This is going to be fun!

Overflow

It is like a faucet that has been leaking for almost 2 years now--except now the sink is full and can take not another drop. There used to be such great hope, such great expectation. There used to be such great love and such great affection. It didn't come in floods, it dripped, steadily and at one point it filled up a great room and I was full. Lately it has been dripping another way and I have known this was coming. The last drop fell today and I am overflowing with sadness. I cannot express how badly it feels when you realize everything you thought about something was flawed--that your perceptions were illusions, mirages in the desert, never really there. I feel as though I have been robbed, as though someone has stolen the one thing that held me up when the clouds came. I am absolutely beside myself right now. I don't know whether to look right or to look left, whether to breathe or not, whether to cry or fly into a rage. No, I don't want to fly into a rage and I don't want to stop breathing and I can look both left and right. There is nothing here that will hurt me anymore. The ghosts have revealed their true identities, the gig is up, the show is over.



I never realized how much I had depended on someone else's unhappiness for my own happiness. Because their unhappiness meant there was room for me, meant that I still counted, meant that I was still loved. Everything is different now and I owe many apologies. I am truly ashamed of myself. I am very happy for them, happy that they are content now and not in such a terrible state of unrest. They deserve everything in the world and this is just the beginning of a windfall of great things. This also means that I am gone. My position has been filled. Mommy and Daddy are back home and silly Mary Poppins can fly off in the wind now. Nothing need be said, if you remember Mary Poppins knew when it was her time to go and she just went. And she went silently. If I truly love the way I say I do, I will make my leave and be just as quiet. I will bow out knowing that there is no more room, knowing that I do not belong here anymore, knowing that I never belonged here.



Give up the ghost they say--never knew what it meant until just now. It is something I have to do in order to be the woman they want me to be. I won't sleep for days as I fight with my ghosts and try to rationalize how I can keep them in my life. I won't eat for days as I rock in the corner mourning a loss. But I will emerge from this--bruised and torn yes--but I will emerge and I will take up my journals and begin to write poetry and maybe I'll ask the universe if this is the time to put down my proverbial torch. And I don't know what she'll say. I will be prepared for anything. Just let me rest now and wrap myself in this great sadness. I will burn this cloak of desolation in a few day's time and will trade it for a cloak of great joy. There are many things to celebrate. I have seen the end of a bad time and the beginning of a new one. Rejoice! Sing praises to god! There is a time and place for everything under the sun. Let us be merry--for this is your time!

Summer Colds

Summer colds are the worst! I've been fighting with one for almost a week now and on Saturday I just had to call in reinforcements. So, thanks to some antibiotics, a little cough syrup, and Prednisone, I seem to be feeling a bit better. In fact I went to see "Sex and The City" this afternoon with friends. It wasn't a great movie like "Elizabeth" or "The Queen", and it wasn't even great as in "Something's Gotta Give" or "Say Anything"; however in its own right it was a great storyline and the characters were memorable and yes, believable. These were not "girls" anymore anyway. The main character Carrie was 40 and one of her friends turned 50 at the end of the movie. This was about women. This was about who we love and who loves us back.

I am eager to find love right now. Being sick this weekend and being all alone made me wish I had a companion who would bring me some water or just sit with me and be there when I woke up during the night. I am eager to share my life, my boring albeit often crazy life. And yet I know that love, authentic love, is hard work. It is hard to find it in the first place, and then it is hard work to keep it. By this I mean, if the love is worth its salt, you will spend time nurturing it and fighting for it and then basking in its glow. I want something to fight for. I am ready for the challenge. I have done the hard work on myself, taken that proverbial look in the mirror, and tried to correct the things I know were not right. I need another sort of mirror now--a mirror in the form of someone that I have stood beside during bad weather, who I have sat next to in Symphony Hall, who I have looked to for guidance, and now who I look at and see what other kind of work I need to do on myself. (I have a friend who says that he is the rock that great men break themselves upon--note to friend, I have broken myself on you too.)

I don't want a wedding and I don't want a honeymoon. I want all the stuff that comes before and after and in between and along the way. I've always toyed around with the idea that I wasn't meant to have a partner, be part of a team, but secretly I've always thought that I was meant to be with someone, with someone strong and gentle, intelligent and sensitive, generous and charitable. At this point in my life I cannot give up on thinking that maybe my soul's lover exists out there somewhere. One day though I will give up, not because I'm tired of waiting, but because the universe will signal me to put down my torch and just follow the path, by myself, and that will be okay. For now, I hold my torch high up in the air with an outstretched arm and look over all the earth to find that matching torch, the one made similar to mine, the one that with mine will light up the universe. If you are out there, raise your torch high so that I may find you. And so that we may carry on the journey of life together.

Pancakes and Expectations

I had the most glorious weekend--I traveled to my parent's house where my sister, her husband, and my precious nephew Jimbo had come to visit too. My brother, Lawton, and his wife and daughter live there already. We had the best time together. On Saturday we all got in the pool and watched Jimbo (19 months) jump off the diving board and blow bubbles and watched Adeline (Lawton's daughter, 10 months) be such a little lady, so demure, wanting to keep away from all the noise the rest of us were making. Dad and Mom were in the pool too! It was a beautiful day and we took advantage of every minute.

It is such a treat for me to wake up to a house full of people. And to wake up to a little boy is even more of a treat! To eat pancakes with him and watch him eat sausage after sausage was thrilling. He talks ALL the time and makes everybody laugh. They are little miracles these children. I am so thankful to have such a loving family around me. Often I wish we lived closer, but then our time together may not be as precious as it is now.

I had no expectations for this trip home. I desired only to be around my siblings and their children and my parents. Things seem to run so much more smoothly when you let go of the way you want things to go and just let things happen. The same goes for relationships. The worst thing you can do is try to "engineer" a relationship. Relationships whether they are romantic or platonic need room to be as they desire to be. You cannot force something that doesn't want or need to exist. This means sometimes you have to let go of certain relationships because you realize that they are forced and somehow no longer make sense. We will all try to make certain things happen, it is in our nature to control. But in the end, those relationships that endure are the ones that were allowed to grow at their natural pace. On the opposite side of the coin those relationships that were made to grow, will eventually die. I have been in both kinds of relationships and I can honestly say that the ones that I let go of and let be were the ones that made me the happiest.

Where I Find Myself

I have been letting my foot heal from a stress fracture now for a month and finally on last Sunday I went for a walk. It was absolutely the most wonderful thing in the world. I felt so alive! I felt so connected with my surroundings! I rested on Monday and yesterday I went for another walk. For some reason I was being very observant on this walk and to my surprise I saw some of the most wonderful things. First of all much had changed on the trail in a month. There were patches of poison ivy where there used to be none and the "weeds" alongside the trail were really tall. (I hate to call them "weeds" because they must serve a purpose, otherwise why would they be there? I don't know what it is, but I'm sure poison ivy serves some purpose as well.) Everything was so green and lush. I saw several plants that I've seen in my mother's garden. And I thought to myself some of these plants are indigenous to Georgia, therefore someone across the world may have never seen them before. I looked up and my eyes met with pine trees and oaks and poplars. I glanced upon verdant ivy and a bit of kudzu springing up among the rocks next to the river. I saw wild ferns and dried up dandelions and vines all twisty and turned up in the trees.

I looked over the trail and saw a beautiful creek coming out of a corner in the woods and went down by the river to watch the water flow around and over and among and under the rocks and branches. I sent a leaf down the river to see which direction it would take. I dipped my hands in the water and then threw a few pebbles in the water just to see them splash. I saw a very big black snake winding its way up the hill--it had just crossed the trail from the water. I will admit that as fascinated as I was by the snake, I was also a bit afraid. I tried to find it on my way back, but it didn't leave much in the way of tracks. Two baby chipmunks crossed the trail right in front of me! They were precious and so small. And there were two robins sitting in the grass (until I came upon them and they took flight).

As I was looking up into the woods I glimpsed a patch of orange. It seemed out of place with all the green surrounding it, so I took another look. It was there, about five or six orange leaves right there in the middle of so many green plants. I have no idea what it was. I wondered a little way into my walk why I had never bothered to look this closely at my surroundings. Then I remembered how fast I used to walk and how determined I was to push myself to the limit and over. I am glad I have slowed down because I missed so much!

After my walk I took a dip in the pool and the water felt so good. I swam back and forth across the pool seeing how far I could go without taking a breath and I did back flips in the water--I was 8 again! Then I realized that my trusty bathing suit was falling apart and I decided it was time to go home. There are lots of ways to spend your time, but I think those two hours in the woods and then in the pool were probably the best spent two hours I've had in a long time. I have to take today off to rest my foot, but I'll be back tomorrow. And I'll have my eyes peeled for anything new, and everything old. Oh how grateful I am to have legs and feet and eyes and ears and a place to go to find myself.

I am thrilled to have set my eyes upon the very intricate world of the woods, upon the thrilling rush of water over rocks, upon creatures slimy and small. I see my world differently now than I did two months ago. I see the natural and the artificial and have learned that I prefer the natural world. One day I am going to wake up on the forest floor and look up and see the sun coming down upon me through the trees. I will be very happy.