brief musings before work.

I only have half an hour before I have to leave for work, but I have so much to say. It has been a week of long hours of physcially demanding work in the heat, the cold, the rain. It has also been a week of art-making, puppy love, and contemplation. I have barely had a minute to myself, my head hurts, my body's tired--but, still, I feel like I am exactly where I'm supposed to be right now. I have still not gotten used to this feeling. I am afraid that it is going to slip away before I make sense of it.

My life feels transitional right now. I wrote about that feeling last year. And I wrote about it the year before that as well. Looking back, I am amazed by the subtle and not so subtle changes that have occurred in my life in just these past 2 years.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what I want my life to look like. I like the way it looks right now, but I feel that this is only the beginning. I've been thinking a lot about my "Mondo Beyondo Dream." I learned this term from Kristine, and seeing her make her Mondo Beyondo dream become a reality has been a source of endless inspiration for me. So I've been asking myself: What is my Mondo Beyondo dream?

And this is the part where I wish I had more time to write. There is so much that I want to record with words. Why the desire to do this? Why do some of us feel such a deep need to write or paint or do whatever we do to record our lives, our thoughts, our place in time and space? I've always felt a great need to write about the daily-ness of my life--both inwardly and outwardly. When I neglect to do this, I start feeling my world spinning slightly out of control. When I am unable to write or paint or express myself in meaningful ways, it becomes difficult to process my day to day experiences.

It feels good to be sitting here right now--even if only for a few minutes. Anu is asleep in the cool grass outside, the puppy is asleep in his bed next to my chair. My little cat is asleep, pressed up against my back. My old cat is asleep at my feet. These places of containment--this is what it is that I am always searching for.

Lately I've been wanting to write about the weather--the way the heat and humidity feels on my skin when I work outside, the way I come home so dirty that I need to take a shower, and how good it feels to cool my dry skin and sore muscles with peppermint lotion. I want to write about the way it feels to work in a garden shop when it rains and how it feels when a cool, wet breeze comes in through the front door and leaves through the back door; the way it makes the paper lanterns that hang from the old wooden ceiling rustle and bump; the way the sky deepens into dark bruised blue and is punctuated by lightening and sirens. I want to write about the old man from New York. I want to write about the way my puppy comes looking for me when he wakes up with such sleepy eyes that it absolutely melts me. I want to write about painting a mural on the bookstore window at night with only the glow of street lamps to illuminate my progress. I want to write about the small crowds that gathered to watch me on the sidewalk, while the store cats gathered along the window to watch me from the inside. As a painter, I used to be completely unnerved by people watching me paint. I've come a long way in the past year. I want to write about how exhausted my body and mind feel when I finally crawl into bed long after midnight and about how I try so desperately to read before falling asleep, but never make it beyond a page or two....and then sleep deeply.

Mostly I just want to record a little bit of myself so that these words can remember who I am right now. Because, these days, I am happy. There is a small bird jumping from branch to branch in the chestnut tree outside my writing room window. And I am happy.

I trust words to remember this time--even if I am likely to forget.