Logan Trail

 

 

I wish that I was a little smaller
With lighter feet
To leave the snails
And snowflakes intact

Reflection

I have never ridden a school bus.

Actually, I have a couple of times. But in the entirety of my homeschooled life, I've never ridden a school bus to public school. I realized today that this is something completely routine for most people, taking up a great percentage of their lives from age seven to sixteen, possibly eighteen. But for me, it's been a once or twice in a lifetime event.

The couple of times I rode a school bus were with my dad and his alternative high school class on field trips. I remember going to a museum, then to a beauty school once. We had lunch in a parking lot next to a gas station. A couple of kids taught me how to make a whistle out of a piece of grass and my thumbs pressed together. We rode the long way home through muted landscape, hills and scrub the roadside scenery.
I really only remember bits and pieces of the trip, I was maybe nine or ten, and my memory's never been the clearest in some respects. I tend to remember snapshots; tall windows; mannequins with wigs; stormy skies; and sitting on green grass, searching for wide blades to practice with. And through it all, my father as this great, tall figure of strength and poise, speaking in his knowing way and kindness shining through his every gesture. 

Quest and Weave, Crest and Wave

I have spent today doing the things I enjoy, and yesterday I did the same.
It would seem that I turned nineteen at five in the morning a great many more than 24 hours ago, one more year spanning across the ages in this grand, small life.  
That's the age two of my best friends were, nineteen, when we met one of them, and really started hanging out with the other. They made being nineteen look absolutely awesome, and I seem to remember and hang onto weird little things about other people, remembering conversations and idiosyncrasies and outward appearance and small details of lives and being at certain times.

This is a year I've been rather looking forward to, for abstract and intangible reasons. This is an age and birthday that arrived gracefully, fitting and flowing freely. Still, I never really think of myself as just one age. I am many. 
I had no expectations, though many hopes for my birthday, however, hope is more flexible than expectation, and doesn't fall as hard when it is not met. Everything was perfect, which I guess is just how life has been lately, perfect as it is, perfect day by day, nothing amiss, though, yeah, there are still things I wish would happen or happen more, and it's not like I'm just blithely happy all of the time.
I am exploring life and being, and rather liking everything I find. There's not much of a concept of good or bad in my head anymore, which in itself, isn't necessarily great or worse. I mean, I do things that don't strike others as kind or safe, but I see no "wrong" with them. Maybe I'm overconfident. Part of the problem with being in the moment, I guess. But I still feel that I straddle past, present and future in my life. I'm getting more and more independent, even though others' still matter, other people still have wisdom and can offer guidance. It's confusing though, because I look at my grandmother, who asks for advice often, and voices her grand dreams, but she doesn't necessarily actually listen to the advice and guidance she gets. I don't really want to do that, because it makes people feel ignored and ill-valued.

I dance around the concepts in my head, as well as the things in outer life, looking carefully at every side of all the dimensions I sense. This can make for confusion, or at least, confusing writing. I look at every side, up and down and in and out, and I can see how I could go spinning off on the tangent, but I hold my core still and continue to observe the thing I am exploring; I want to see it all. Like the blind men and the elephant, except I want to feel every side of the elephant, and I want to know what others feel, what the elephant is to them, and then I can fit it to what I know of the elephant and know the elephant a little better.
I want to choose, not just fly off at the most opportune sound or sight. I guess that's why I don't really get mad anymore, at least not lately, not necessarily never --stretching of into the future-- There are so many sides to everything, and so many sides to every person who, themselves, feel so strongly. And the why for their feelings, oh, that could be explored forever too.
My brother, who reading a piece out loud during the Christmas organ recital, mispronounced a word. This, along with the absolute beauty of his tone and inflection while reading, striking every word in gold and mahogany, sent me and my sister into a strained giggle fit. It wasn't meant to make him uncomfortable, and it wasn't even entirely because of him, but also of the absurd beauty of the entire program, the emotion and setting and remembering there, everyone singing lovely songs off-key but whole heartedly and in easy companionship. Beautiful things can be amusing, you know, and I am elvish, fairy-kind, Gwragged Annwn, seeing the world at odd angles which can elicit strange reactions and emotions from me. It was exhilarating, in a way, and uncontrollable, I knew it wasn't a good idea, but it was nigh unto impossible to stop. I kept bumping up next to and careening off of my sister's giggling. We did eventually get a hold of ourselves, though, when the next carol finally started.
The whole thing was kind of embarrassing, and I apologized profusely to my brother right after and multiple times over the course of the evening.
Somebody asked that evening, after the program was over, whether I felt more mature, it being my birthday and all, and I said yes, though inside I was remembering the giggle fit and how childish that was. It was embarrassing, but it doesn't actually bother me a lot, it was what it is and will be. I am forty and four and nineteen, you know; I'm not sure how it all meshes together, but somehow it does. 

One way to write down my philosophies and beliefs

There is life to be lived; I am so cautious, though, and I'm looking and searching and hoping and praying and waiting and writing, because there is an answer in my bones, the air, my heart, the music I listen to, the books I read, and you.

This god I am learning, this god is everywhere, this creator is everything and creation itself. This god is me and you and our parents and siblings, this god is Zooey, her friend, and the people in my Ekklesia, this god is relationship and loneliness, the universe, my love, and every atom, as well as the space between atoms, and the spaces between spaces, and the spaces between those spaces.
I am looking within and without and all around for answers, every step I take. All is good and all is strange and all is impossible to put into words, but that is the only thing I can do, put all into words. That is the way for me to learn and communicate and shape. But all is feeling; so staggeringly abstract. So this is my struggle, to give form to the formless, and decide if it is worth it in this world of material goods and science and skepticism, this world in which man's purpose is to make money and he suffers, and he who does not follow this purpose, or he who tries to use the purpose to bring about the things of his heart also suffers.
The weaving, winding voice of contradiction in all things, my love, this is what fuels the ludicrous act of struggle in a web that doesn't actually exist, but we created it, so here it is.

All I can do is search blind and fingerless for myself and hold it out to you, inviting you to take of your own free will, and share whatever you desire with me, but nothing, my child, is required.

Nothing is required.