Starting Over (We're About 9)

It's the last day of January 2020 and, despite the re-occurrence of my back problems and a few blips with family and friends, it's been a good year so far.  I really have enjoyed being off Facebook (so much sensory overload), being more productive, spending more time with Colin, and reading like a motherf*cker (more on that in another post...  :-)

My calendar is full, but with joyful activities and interactions, and I'm trying to create white space for breathing and introspection as well.  Who the h*ll am I without a job, a concert series, social media?!?  Stay tuned.

Thunder rolls in the distance and, if it does start storming, I'll probably make a cup of lemon ginger tea, with a swirl of honey, and go out to my lounge chair on the balcony to listen and smell the agitating air.  Feels like my heart, or the backs of my legs when the sciatica hits.  Electricity.  Shocking.  Awareness.


SONG:  Starting Over by We're About 9

BOOK:  The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have by Mark Nepo

POEM:  Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

QUOTE:  “And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke