Je te adore!

We often like to keep our options open, at least in our own minds. Making decisions, choosing among alternatives, necessitates the paring down of options. To simplify, we must close some of the doors. When we close a door, it makes room for a new opportunity. It's important, once the door is shut, to turn our focus to the open doors that remain.
All this metaphor is just trying to say that commitment involves choice.

Thoughts on a(nother) gloomy day

Cold drops of rain fall
from the edge of my hat
onto my neck
and trickle
slowly
down.

Twenty-three days until the first day of spring.
It has been a long, cold, lonely winter (little darling)....
I am not sure if this winter is what I expected it to be.
Then again, I am not sure if my life is what I expected it to be!

I guess that's why they say that life is what happens when you are busy making other plans. ( I can't wait to see them again. They are so wise. Wisdom loves company!)

Good Lord, I crave sunshine, and warmth.

Snippet

It can be a pretty intense experience to search one's soul, but the rewards are commensurate with the amount of effort we are willing to give.
Maybe even greater. Maybe exponentially greater.

Synchronicity and Serendipity

The greatest thing about synchronicity is that it seems to happen more when you are looking for it. It has a self-fulfilling prophecy component to it.
Synchronicity is a term coined by Carl Jung, to explain "meaningful coincidences." Synchronicity is "an acausal principle that links events having a similar meaning by their coincidence in time rather than sequentially."
Serendipity is the aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. Most people think of serendipity as being synonymous with good fortune. It was derived in the 1800's, from an old Persian fairy tale, by an English author named Horace Walpole.
So, synchronicity and serendipity are similar in some respects (note to self: repeat this sentence under your breath at least ten times today!). You might say that serendipity could be a result of synchronicity. Yet, synchronicity differs from serendipity in that, at least in my experience, it happens more when you are expecting it; whereas serendipity, by its very definition, happens when you are not expecting it!
I think this one will require some more field research. As a matter of fact, that has already begun, since my adoring fan base called to sniff out a post while I was writing this!

The Other Shoes

Ever since I saw a shoe on the side of the road in late December, and then wrote about it here, I have been seeing shoes by the side of the road! Not a week goes by that I don't see one. That is vastly amusing to me, and it also speaks to the power of focus. Likely the shoes were always there, but I didn't take note of them before. Although I am in the habit of looking for beauty everywhere, and, amazingly, I do find it!
Something to dwell on, during this gloomy late winter day......

Why Do We Play?

Why do we play?
We play in order to feel good.
We play in order to smile and laugh.
We play in order to connect with others.
We play in order to have fun.
It's simple, and it's easy, and it's free.
I would write more, but I am going to go play.

Quote for the day

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. --Mark Twain

A poem by Julia

Good Dreams by Julia, Age 7

Good dreams believe in your heart
ohh....you're so lovely
so lovely....
that you can wake up....
....in your good dreams, so...
Just believe in your heart to the good dreams.
Just wake, wake up in the good dreams.
Don't wake up in the bad dreams.
To be yourself, just love others
And believe in your heart.
So, just be honest to be true.
To love one other than you.
For always to be stars above
To truly be a love.

Where this blog's name comes from....

"The Gateway" by Alec Derwent Hope

Now the heart sings with all its thousand voices
To hear this city of cells, my body, sing.
The tree through the stiff clay at long last forces
Its thin strong roots and taps the secret spring.

And the sweet waters without intermission
Climb to the tips of its green tenement;
The breasts have borne the grace of their possession,
The lips have felt the pressure of content.

Here I come home: in this expected country
They know my name and speak it with delight.
I am the dream and you my gates of entry,
The means by which I waken into light.

Love, Love, Love

Your essential self is love. All the rest that is layered upon that is window dressing. They are simply the tools at your disposal for creating your life and living in it.
To return to that essential self is your ultimate goal. Therein lies the peace and love of God. At the center of your being, at the heart of you, is Love/Peace/God. These are simply words to describe something that is indescribable.
I think it's good, on Valentine's Eve, to keep this perspective. Valentine's Day is a great day for celebrating love, notwithstanding its being co-opted by the romantic version of itself.
Love is a verb. Love makes the world go around. Love is the only thing that is real. All you need is love.
All I am saying, is give love a chance. Love is a miracle, present every moment in our lives. It asks only that you open to it.

O Say, You Silly Savage

It's a good time for poetry about love. Here is one of my all-time favorites:
Shakespeare's Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Wild Is The Wind

Having had plenty of drama in my life, it is a revelation
to me, now that my life is quiet, that I so often mistook
drama for passion. Or maybe, I made do with drama,
when what I really wanted was passion. So, life as
it is drawn now, is relatively predictable, and therefore
not dominated by drama.
Now I can aim for the real thing. Now I can set my sights on
what is true. Now I get the idea. Now I know what I want.
PASSION.
I aspire to passion unfettered by worry.
To be wild like the wind.

Why can't I have more days like this??

I admit, I have been experiencing writer's block, so I am recounting a
vision I had several years ago.
There is a door, made of heavy old wood, set into a lush green hedge. The door opens,
and a being beckons me inside. I feel welcomed, and I see that I am entering a maze.
I am told I can go through the maze; to just follow it around every corner,
and I will come to a beautiful garden.
The being then hands me a book. I am told it is a book of
knowledge, and I can open the book anytime I need help.
Next I am handed a bowl, and told that I can put all my fears in the bowl,
and they will be washed away.
Finally, I am given a feather, and told that this symbolizes flight.
My Higher Self is now here. As always (s)he is full of Peace and Happiness.
We acknowledge each other, and promise to stay in better touch with each other.
Why can't I have more days like this? Don't answer, I already know.

The World Without Us

"The World Without Us" is a fascinating treatise on the ways the earth would take itself back, were humans to simply disappear in an instant. Also, it goes into some detail about how we humans have affected the earth over the course of time.
If you have the time and any interest in anthropology and/or the environment, I highly recommend it! (Actually, I borrowed the book on CD from the library, so I had it read to me, which was even better).
If you don't plan to read it, here is a nutshell summary:
1) The world, without us, will change, for the better, eventually.
2) We have done an incredible amount of mucking up the earth.
If you want to know just a tiny bit about the world without us, here is a link to one page of the author's website: http://www.worldwithoutus.com/did_you_know.html

Write Now?

I finally had the courage to read the novel I began to write in November. I decided it is awful, and not at all what I want to write. There are some good bits, but I don't think the plot is original enough. Certainly the writing borders on hackneyed, at least in my opinion.
Of course, we are our own worst critics. Still, I am going back to the drawing board with this one. I still think I want to write on the theme of memory, but I have to go in a different direction. This time, I will write an outline first. So:
#1) Establish a goal, e.g. a basic premise of the story: Foundation
#2) Draw up an outline of the major events of the story: Framework
#3) Add deliciously descriptive prose and interesting characters: Foof!
Yes, okay, I can do this.