Cosmicically Correct Connections

I had a very cool day of odd happenings yesterday.  I am reticent to share.  What I think and perceive, and put in to words, does not always come across as I have meant to the reader.

This is both beautiful and curious.  Also the reason I hated taking poetry classes in college.  I did not want to dissect any poems, to get to what the author had intended.  I wanted to keep the feelings the poem mean to me.  How I descry the poem, how it relates to me.  (side note, this is also why I hate music videos, I do not want to think of a video when I hear a song, I want my own mental musical video of memories to come to me.  Exception: I do know the Thriller dance.)

Since I live much of my life through the transparency of the written word, the reader has only to take what I say.  The rest is up to the reader to fill in the blanks.

Often these blank spots are incorrect.  I let it slide.  Let the reader think what they want about me, but take my words and make them your own.  That is always what I hope for.  Even when I am just telling a story, or parable.

Take the following as a parable:

Yesterday morning I decided, with some encouragement, to go to the lake.  I have not been all summer and it was a beautiful day.  I would venture alone.  Spontaneous decision.

On my way, about a mile from my house, and ten from the lake I sat at a red light, windows down, no music playing.

A homeless man on the corner yelled to me to get my attention.

"Hey! You have not forgotten about me have you?"

I looked at him and did not recognize him.  I talk to enough homeless people to know this was not one of my regulars.  I engage with homeless people near my house, and on almost every corner.  Usually they never ask me for anything but the ears I have to listen for the amount of time a red light can run.

I smiled and yelled, "How could I forget about you?" Even though I am certain we have never met.

He smiled and said "It has been a while since I have seen you, I just wanted to make sure!"

I asked him how he was, and he said he had no complaints, hesitated lifted his cardboard sign and said he could complain but he wont.  I replied with a lame, "Well it is a beautiful day!"

He looked right at me and said, "You should go to the lake!  Yeah, that's what I think you need to do, go to the lake!"

The light turned and he yelled, "Don't forget about me!"

I had nothing obvious in my car saying HEY I AM GOING TO LAKE EVERYONE!  No bathing suit on, no towel on the front seat, and he could not see into my car from his distance anyway.

I laughed and said out loud, "Hey God, are you talking to me through homeless people again?  Because if you are I think that is kind of ironic, and not ironic at the same time.  Okay not talking to you because I do not believe in you."

I drove the rest of the way in silence.

When I arrived I noticed no one else was there, just as I like it.  Took my towel, my floatie, and headed out to the dock I love the most.

After baptizing myself in the water (dunking three times) I climbed the ladder to lay down and listen to the sounds around me.

After a while I heard a woman's voice gently saying, "Excuse me?" as she walked closer to me.
I sat up and said hi.
"Im sorry I do not mean to interrupt you, I just wanted to thank you."

"Thank me for what?" I asked completely confused.

"You have inspired me to come here alone.  I have lived here almost my entire life and I have never come to the lake alone, seeing you made me think I could do it."

She appeared to be slightly older than I am, and I went on about the virtues of coming to the lake alone, especially during the week.  I even dared to say she was allowed to lay out topless, as it is permitted.

That lead to a humorous conversation about age, gravity and breasts.

She wandered back to her family and I resumed gathering sun rays.  I looked at the water just in time to see a man emerging in full scuba attire.

I said the most logical thing I could think of.

"Looking for dead bodies?"

He laughed awkwardly and said "No."  Then he lifted up an under water metal detector. He began to tell me about all the things he had found.  I suggested he look on the other side of the dock where the bottom is not covered in mesh.

My new female friend with permission to come to lake alone came over to join the conversation.

The scuba diver held out his findings, bottle caps, pennies, sunglasses.  He also had a penny that had been through one of those machines that smooshes it and marks where it was from.  Later he gave me this penny to keep.

The penny was smooshed in Hawaii.  I like to think it was someone's good luck coin, that now can be my good luck coin.

I kept an eye on the time during the conversation as my time there was only going to be for one hour.
The woman and I exchanged names and emails.  I imagine I will write to her with encouraging lake going words and she can find some independence through my permission.  I know it is strange, but she needs my permission, or inspiration.  Why else would she come up to me in the first place?

Before I left the woman said, "I found this, I think it belongs to you, or that you need it, it's a necklace."

The scuba man said, "Oh yeah, I found that earlier and put it on the dock, means nothing to me."

I stood up and reached for the necklace, the woman saying, "I think it is something spiritual, that's why it belongs to you."

I took the gentle string and beads and immediately saw that it was a rosary.  Not one mass produced.  This one was lovingly hand made, each bead chosen, even the cross was beaded in a way that I could not figure out.

I laughed.  "I collect rosaries, how funny you found it!"

"I knew it was something spiritual."

Scuba man wished me a farewell as I gathered my things and said maybe we would meet again.  He explained he does not live here and he and his buddy (who I never saw) only came down for the day.

I wished him well on his huntings.  I hugged my new friend promising to email soon, slipped the rosary on my neck and left.

I was smiling like a fool.  Everything seemed to connect and I have no idea why.  I thought again about the cosmos, and how it has taken me looking out further to find connection like my fellow monk Giordano Bruno.

He looked at the cosmos, I have also looked.  And yet a lucky penny and a gentle rosary came to me from the depths of a lake that I love.

Everything connects.

Glimpse of a Hermits Life Redux

*Yes this should be a footnote, but I am a rule breaker so I am putting this up here instead.  Rarely do I pull a blog.  Rarely do I edit.  But when I read this particular blog I saw some egregious mistakes that I had to correct.  I also want to convey just how excited I am by all of the things I have been learning.

 For so very long I have looked down, or at least at eye level.  Water has always been my baptismal font into humanity.  It may remain that way, but I have discovered another way.  I had to look up and beyond anything my eyes could see to feel a connection to the here and now.

 A connection that feels so profound I do not know why everyone isn't drinking my Kool Aid!  The further I go in my research the more I can see a connection between science and faith.
I am far from the first one to see such a connection. Nor am I ready to genuflect to the skies.

 A monk some 400 years ago deeply loved God.  His name was Giordano Bruno.  He was burned at the stake.  Not a pleasant or fast way to die, much less humane.

His crime?  He believed Earth was not the center of the Universe.  His love of science only resolved further his love of God.  They were not separate.  Unless you happened to live in a time where the Catholic Church believed they were the center of the universe.  A side note: It took until 1992 to admit that even Copernicus was correct, however Bruno is still listed as a heretic.

Yes, yes I digress.  It is something that so excites me I want to share it.  And I do not have to share the facts, or what some might find mundane.

I can share all this with a smile.  With an act of kindness, with a wave hello, or a hug.

Maybe in my next blog I will talk about how trees and plants communicate with each other and how we share our DNA.

For now, I will remain (as I was recently deemed) Your beautiful Buddhist Nerd



This has been a particularly unusual summer for me.  I did not walk any train tracks with my friends resulting in finding a dead body and thus the meaning of friendships.

I did not go to the beach and let my feet get sucked further in the sand, resulting in undertow fascination.

I did not step on to a plane, train, or even used my barely running car.  I have not even walked barefoot in the yard, or had a debate on humidity.

For some reason people love to claim they have the most humidity. (Unless you live in New Orleans you are best to keep quiet on the subject of frizzy hair).

My kayak dry docked, fat bathing suit has yet see water.

 So what have I been doing all summer?

My head has been swimming with ideas, creations, and research.

Asking questions I never asked before.   So many questions I feel like a four year old asking "why?" about everything!

The start of the summer was Mathematics.  What a  beautiful a language and  I can only grasp an infinitesimal part of it.

 I can tell you that now when I look at my cat half curled , feet sticking out I see an imaginary Fibonacci Sequence drawn around him.

After some period of time, math lead me to Astro Physics. Seems like a logical jump.

 Each day I am learning something new and different and mesmerizing.  Everything is so amazing I am itching to bore my friends about it all at a dinner party (A dinner party I would a) Not be invited to, and b) Not attend, hermit that I am).

As I have previously written about, I have also been meditating.

I began to meditate to feel connected with the earth and my fellow earthlings.  I meditate to clear my mind, or take a mental vacation.  Each time is different.

I had yet to feel connected to anything but my nostrils until I had a rather profound self discovery.

Meditation is repetition of sound, thought, or breath to get to a place where you can see your thoughts, love them and let them go, or sit with the painful ones, as I have said before.

My meditation has changed.  I close my eyes and immediately I am engulfed in the Universe.  Galaxies, dark matter, neutrinos, antineutrinos, the icy rings of Saturn, black holes, white holes, string theory, and the list goes on.

I am in a parediolia state.  I see things that are there, and are not there at the same time.

It is a place that is both full of light and stygian at the same time.

The more we learn, the more we are able to say we do not know for sure.

It is within this vast space (literally) that I am able to feel connected to my fellow beings.  I feel at one with all of it, with the questions, with the trees, with the feel of earth, and the unknowing and brutal space above.

I do not call it the heavens, because trust me if you had any idea what goes on beyond our white puffy clouds, it is anything but heavenly and serene.  It is bombastic and brutal, and always changing.

That is the good stuff.  The stuff I feel at one with.

Glimpsing the universe or multiverse, how can I not take a moment to smile at the clerk working hard and wish them a great day.

To the other hermits that I connect with, how can I not sit and listen to what interests them?

My summer has been spent asking the big and little questions.

Why are we here?

Where do we come from?

My mother used to say I was planned.  I do not believe her.  All evidence points to she may have wanted another baby, but my father did not.

As to why are we here?  Why not?

The puffy clouds part and the sun shines through making our skin warm, and people smile.  The song "Let the sun shine in..." is much more poetic than, "Let the conduction, radiation and convection shine in."

This summer I have remained a hermit, mainly out of lack of finances.

But I did find a way to travel.  Through space, through thought, and more thought, and back again.

All to connect with myself.

And you.

Did I Do Something Stupid?

The other day I accidentally burned a small hole in the blanket on our bed.  It is not an expensive blanket, or even the one usually kept on our bed.

I will interject here to say please hold off on your advice to me to quit smoking.  And stop smoking in the house, and especially stop smoking in the house and on my bed.  I know it all.

Back to the tiny hole.

I tried to arrange the blanket so the hole was hidden, at the foot of the bed.  No go.  It is too centered due to my bed-making skills of turning down the blanket and the top sheet together.  That adds length which makes the hole fairly well centered.

I was watching TV and my eyes kept going to that hole.  It was taunting me so much I had to go find my small and very unimpressive sewing kit.  I searched every place I could think of and the sewing kit would not reveal itself.

I went back to watching TV.

The hole kept screaming at me.

I stomped out of bed and realized the sewing kit was in my office.  I victoriously stomped back to my room, sat by the hole and opened my kit.

No needles.  Not one.  Not even the ones I keep for my sewing machine.

I put the sewing kit on my dresser and moved the  papers on my bed over the hole.

While watching TV, I imagined the hole and what it would look like when I finally did find a freaking needle.

It will still be there.  A flaw.  A noticeable one.  A tiny little closed up hole.  A small void stitched together.

It wont be perfect.  It will never be perfect again.  No matter how many ways I make the bed I will notice it.  This flaw.

 I had the thought that we were born flawless in a zipped up plastic bag from Target and then slowly we get little flaws that happen along the way.  A scar from a skinned knee, or a surgery.  Invisible scars carved on our insides from life's pains and pleasures.

Proof positive that nothing is perfect.

we all still try to be perfect.

 I meditate, I cleanse crystals in salt water under a full moon, I go to therapy.  I am flawed.

My life is full of tiny little sewn up patches.  Everyone has them.  We just do not always see them.

Sometimes we are compelled to draw attention to our patches.

The house is not clean, and we quickly apologize to our friend who rang the doorbell.

"Sorry, my house is a mess"

You begin to look around and notice the mess when at first all you saw was your friend.

If you have a good enough friend they reply, "Please, I don't give a shit.  Let's have coffee." and you step over whatever unmentionable was previously mentioned.

I have a quilt that  my grandmother made me.  I do not use it anymore.  It is safely tucked away inside a plastic zippered bag that another blanket arrived in.

The quilt is beautiful, and old now, and has a few small holes and tears in it.  It is loved and it is fragile.  Too fragile I have decided.  So it is only brought out as a last resort blanket.  I am always happy to see it and always look for the corner where my grandmother embroidered her name and the date.

Some day we will all be too fragile.  We will all be fraying at the ends, and so stitched together we could be in a Tim Burton movie.  Now we are not.

Now we patch up.

And if we do not have the tools to immediately patch up, well, currently my dog is doing a fine job of covering the offensive hole.

That is good enough for me.

May I Offer You a Cup of Chaos?

Something interesting came up in therapy.  Yes, I go to therapy, get over it.  If you still hold a stigma against  therapy then I suggest you go immediately.

As I said, something came up in therapy, I was talking a bit about my partner and I.  I noted that I do not mind chaos.  Chaos is easy.  With chaos you can pick one thing out of the eye of a chaotic storm and deal with it.

In the mathematical way they can not even truly define chaos to make it chaotic.  Yes if you google it you will see an animated double pendulum.  watching it is hypnotic, but by using two perfect starts (the pendulum), they are already not making it chaotic.  Thee chaos theory claims  each time it starts you will always get a different response.  Yet we know that not to be true, or else why would people waste money on lottery tickets.  eventually the same result will occur.

When I was a teenager my room was always a mess, there was a certain chaos to it, yet I was always able to find what I needed.  So there was no real chaos to it.

In that house of my formative years, there was a chaos of people.  Any time day or night you could find someone to talk to.  Or two or three people that did not even  live in the house sitting together talking.  This was not odd to me.  I would say hello, or not, and go about whatever I was doing.

Just chaotic people floating around in a chaotic house.

Permit me if you will, (Ive always wanted to use that line!) to say there is no chaos.

Oh yes, I said it.  Now I will scream it so you really grasp the blasphemy of mathematics.

THERE IS NO CHAOS!

Wow, that felt good!

The man who invented Chaos Theory even blew his own theory by giving it a nickname.

The Butterfly Effect.

One small action can cause much larger actions  (or reactions) down the road.

Doesn't sound chaotic to me at all.  Sounds logical.

I woke up thinking about my house.  At the moment it is chaotic, I am the only one here, but it is chaotic.  Books need to be put away, cat puke picked up, a serious mop job, laundry and on and on and on.

While thinking about  my house in its chaotic state I came to the understanding that I know nothing.

Sit with me on this for a moment.  I know nothing.

 I do not know how to mop, even if I mop every day.  I do not know how to raise children, yet I raised five, I do not know what I want to be when I grow up, and I am 48.

This thought first startled me.  I mean whoa!  I know nothing?  My brain began to try and immediately dispel the "I Know Nothing Theory".

Brain: You know how to type
Me:  I was taught yes and my fingers move deftly across they keyboard, yet I still cheat and look down once in a while.
Brain: You know how to make coffee.
Me: Laughing, yeah, ask Mer about that one!
Brain: You know how to drive a car
Me; Most of the time I do not recall even driving, so who is driving the car then?
Brain: You know how to love.
Me;  No, I know that I DO love, I also hurt the people I love, my love is full of defect limitations even I am unaware of it at the time I am making them.

 On it went, as I got out of bed and yes did make coffee, and yes remembered at the last second to put the lid on the machine.

Love and communication and being human is full of flaws and chaos.  A perfect form of chaos that can be cleaned up, swept up, made up, put together.

I can take an example of my current chaos and trace it back to the very moment it began.  It may have been weeks, or years ago. I can trace it.

Knowing there is no true chaos, knowing a small action I made at some random point helped to shape who I am now, means I know nothing.

I know, I know, you are currently screaming inside all the things you do know.  About your job, your life, making pancakes.  Is any of it perfect?  If it is not perfect, than you know nothing.

Please do not strive for perfection.  It is unattainable.  Or at least I think so, I do no know so.

I have been working on loving myself, and others without conditions.  I am learning how to love without expecting it in return.  I am learning how to forgive myself, and keep on loving the people I have hurt, myself included.

These are all learning practices.

To practice, not to master or know fully.

Waking up to realize I know nothing, wast amazing!

Think of all the things there are yet to discover but never really know!

Try today to realize you know nothing.

Look at one small action you do, and really see it, be there with that action.  What does your hand feel when you brush your daughter's hair?

What is your mind thinking when you fill your cup of coffee?  Can you hear it splash?

What is getting dressed like?  Are you in a hurry?  Too much of a hurry to take a tiny moment to appreciate the material on your skin?

I think of a day where I have to do mundane things, looking at all of it as a moment in time that wont repeat itself exactly.

There are no small actions.

I will mop, but I will never exactly repeat the action, even if I do it every day.  There will always be a bit of chaos in it.  How remarkable that we humans get to do these tasks and see them as different and chaotic every single time we repeat them?

 How cool is it that we are the ones that know nothing of ourselves or our world that we created?

What an amazing chance to see the world around us.  There is no task too small for us not to take notice of it, feel it, think about it, and even appreciate it!

Try it!  Do not take my word for it.

I know nothing, and that is awesome!

As Time Goes By

A long long time ago (532 million years or so) there was an "explosion".  This explosion has come to be known as the Cambrian Explosion.  It is where scientist mostly agree life form that led to us began.

Wow.  Heavy shit right there.  But break it down a little and you will see that the explosion took about 10 million years.  That is one slow explosion.

Even slower still was the time that took place until this very moment when I am writing these words.
We had to change grow, change, grow some more, add some wisdom teeth (that are now becoming extinct, and not by extraction alone.  More and more people are being born without them, they are no longer necessary.)  Cool right?

No more videos on YouTube of post-wisdom-teeth-removal people on drugs claiming to be Mylie Cyrus.  That speaks of evolution right there.

This "explosion" is much like the Big Bang that (obviously) occurred before it.  Without that, there would have been no Ediacarans, and without our Great Uncle Ed (x532 million) there would be no us.

Okay, so the Earth and universe changes.  It has to keep up with the times, and we with it.  So we go from the ooze to the stars to look for answers.

The problem is, that star you wished on as a chid probably did not exist anymore.  It is a dead star.  Not to be confused with a Death Star (which I literally know nothing about!).

So in all innocence  you looked up and wished on nothing.  even if we can see the light, it is just a trick.  We are looking into the far far past.

So where does that leave us?

In the present.  I am deeply grateful that people are dedicating their lives to trying to figure out what "It all means".  By land or by sea, or by stars that do not actually twinkle.

The twinkle in your eye is more real than the twinkle of a star (due to the distance and the earth's atmosphere and our perception.)

Again, I ask, "Where does that leave us?"

It leaves us not alone is the best answer I can come up with.  I am not talking about aliens, or God here.  You can talk amongst yourselves on that matter.

We are left here, surrounded by other people.  We make tribes, families, friends.  We find our tribe mates in gas stations, Universities, online.

We are humans that gravitate to each other for comfort, love, affirmation of our existence.

Out of that some of us create little humans.  Born, chosen, in a dish, from a foreign country.

Or we choose not to have little humans.  We still have our tribes that support us on our endeavors whatever they may be.

I have a friend who is determined to sing karaoke in every single state.  That is just as lofty a goal as a monk who endeavors to find the place where sin does not exist and God resides in him.

Some days my goal is to get out of bed.

We are not done evolving.  We are basic humans.  We make mistakes.  Some call our mistakes karma, some call it sin.  We turn to our books, our computers, and eventually each other for help.

Mapquest will only take you so far, and half of the instructions are just to get out of the neighborhood you already know!

A long time ago I had a philosophy teacher in high School.  One day he drew a long line on the chalk board like this:

_________________________________________________________________________________

He then said the start of that line is the beginning of the World and the end of the line is the end of the world.

Okay.  Cool.  That doesn't seem to hard to grasp.

The he took his chalk and said "I will now show you YOUR lifespan. He did the following:

_________________________________.________________________________________________

Can you see it?  A spec.  Even smaller than that really but I am limited by the keystrokes I am offered.

Whoa.

I better get going and do something!  I am a speck.  I need to gather more specks and make something of this.

But there are bills to pay, relationships to create, break, or fix.  There are ideas that float around in my head that need to be written down.

"A lot of people enjoy being dead.  But they are not dead really. They're just backing away from life."- Harold and Maude

I am guilty of this sin, or karmic avoidance.

I died a long time ago.  I had a wonderful tribe that I put together, and then I exploded it.  Now I am alive again and I have much to do, to say, to think, to observe, to mend.

My tribe contracts and expands continually.

So if I am a speck and there are other people out there worrying about where we came from and where we are going, I am free to concentrate on my tribe.  My family, friends, and others who wander in and out of my sphere.

Is there any calling higher than taking care of the ones you love and allowing them to take care of you?

For some that answer is yes.  Not for me.  For me I choose to use my speck of time pondering people, helping where I can, making mistakes, fixing them or not.

I am deeply grateful for an explosion that took 10 million years in the making.

That time has given me the chance to be gathered up in a tribe that includes writers, lawyers, journalists, artists, lovers of art, cat people, dog people, people who know what a Death Star is, professors, teachers, musicians, hula hoopers, dancers, beer makers, people of faith, athiests, builders, readers, social workers, historians, smokers, drinkers, thinkers, actors, singers, farmers, and more.

530 million years ago we all began to come together and connect.

How cool is that?

Something happened that gave me a tribe, gave me the possibility to make contact.  With anyone.

With you.

Is This the End, My Beautiful Friend?

I once got involved in an abusive relationship.  At first mentally, and eventually it turned physical.  I was able to escape it.  Learn from it and move on.

One thing that was said to me while in that particular relationship was;  I keep writing the same thing over and over and I should just stop.

I have never been able to let go of this sentence.

I spent some time looking over this accusation, to the degree that I could, as part of the abuse she was able to get rid of my previous blog.  Poof.  Gone into the cyber abyss.

From what I have been able to look over, I have to say, she may have been batshit crazy, but she was right.

I do write about the same things.

Am I just running on a treadmill?  Always going forward never reaching any real destination?

I like to think I have gained some insight in me and my place in the world over the years.  Everyday I do manage to learn something new.

Last night I learned I could play cats cradle with my Mala beads.  Not sure that is what Buddha intended but it made me laugh.  "Hey Buddha check this out, I can still do Jacob's ladder!"

That lead me to think who was Jacob and why is it his ladder?

I am also able to see how many people have read my blog.  Not who, just how many.  The highest number to date is 259.  That was my Mom's Eulogy.

259 people curious to see what I had to say about my mother.  259 people that have not returned to see anything else.

Through my writing I live a very transparent life.  I let whoever reads this see my joys and pains, failures, successes.

On average it is about 35 people.

Is that enough to even call myself a writer?  Why am I even continuing to do this if, in fact, I do repeat themes?

The other common thread in how many readers I have is when I post about God, or religion in general.

Are more people as confused and searching as I am and are drawn to my ongoing investigations?

I have written about God, death, life, children, cellulite, family, and the occasional kitchen appliance.

To what end?

I think people today want to read about quick fixes and short answers.  We want a direct connection without pushing buttons or talking to machines.

I can not give you that.  I can give you my insight to my life, which is lived in literally small spaces, and endlessly in my head.

I can give you a few definite things that I have learned:

If you want to lose weight, eat less and move more.  I  have no idea how to tell you to get up and actually do it.

If you are in a bad relationship, leave it.  No matter how hard it may be.

If you want your vegetables chopped, use a knife, or buy some new fangled thingamajig you saw on TV at 3am.

I can not tell you how to fix your relationship with your child, friend, lover, or spouse.

I can't even get my own dogs to poop outside.

Maybe I am not a writer.  Maybe I am simply an observer.

Maybe I am just the updated female version of Hawkeye writing to his father. (I am going to assume my faithful 35 get that reference).

Maybe it is time to stop writing.

Maybe it is time to write more.

Maybe it is time to see what else I can create with my Mala beads.

Being Present is a Present

I notice the multitude of rosaries hanging on the side of my bed are covered in dust.

 I take them off, untangled them, try to recall where each one came from and why it is special.

 After laying them out I dust them off on the the tapestry we now use as a bed cover.

 The prayer beads around my wrist kept getting in the way, reminding me to be present in my present, even if it feels annoying.

I recall that I need to bring in my crystals that have been soaking in salt water under a full moon that recharged them.

On my path to retrieve my crystals, I pass a crucifix on the wall.

Oy.  This should be making my head hurt.

But it doesn't.

I look down at my hands to the ring on my thumb  that has the words "Inhale" and "Exhale" engraved.  I do as they say.

My eyes wander to my dresser.  I look at the photo of my mother and I.  A rosary, purchased from the place where she (and my father) are buried, drapes over the frame.

A small statue of an an angel sits in front of the picture.

The last gift she ever bought me.

My eyes drift further to another small statue; a Dia de Muertos figure riding a motorcycle adorned with shocking blond hair.

A gift to my love from her mother because it looks like my love.  All things being equal she rests on my dresser.

A dish my mother used for soap in her bathroom now holds the recharged crystals, and a small carved turtle.

Meredith's paintbrushes stick out of a vase that is filled with sand and shells from Naples, Florida.

An even smaller replica of sand and shells sits in my bathroom, and one in the living room.

Reaching the end of my visual journey is a photograph of Meredith's Grandmother.  A woman I will never meet.  That fact does not prevent me from conjuring stories about her.

The more I learn of her, the more human she becomes, and my stories become just that.  Fiction.

Fiction floats around my room and inside my head as I gaze at each object.  A clock from the 1930's.  How many people looked at it and realized they were late for some event?  Does it chime or make any sound?  Did women with long cigarette holders watch it on New Year's eve waiting to kiss someone?

In the 1970's was the clock lost to a box carefully taped and labelled "Dad's Stuff", only to reopened and treasured again 30 years later?

After putting my dust free rosaries back where they hang (unused), my eyes go back to the sand and paint brushes.

The sand makes me smile the smile of bittersweetness.  I will never go back to that sand again.  I will not throw all the kids in the car and make the 24 hour journey to spend days in that sand.

I will never walk the ramp of the airport to see my Mom waving with both hands as she always waved.  Hello or goodbye, both hands were always waved, like a believer in a tent church revival who waves in opposite direction than the rest of the flock.

I am at peace with this.

I am surrounded by objects that scream their memories to me, some fiction, some fact.  All come from the past.

 All reminding me to live in the present.

Inhale.

Exhale.