For letting go...

"Knowledge is the season for knowing when and why....balances and reasons keep me from the fire...and every time I'm placed within a perfect role...people come and go, people come and go, people come and go...
Fire can be friendly, raising perfect pain...burning off tomorrow and yesterday the same...to always be so weak, and never want to know...you know we come and go, you know we come and go, you know we come and go..."

Me Died Blue By Steven Delopoulos

My best melancholy.

October 2006
The air tonight was clean, original and exquisite. Autumn means something significant to me, something filled with symbolism and poetry. It’s as though everything becomes increasingly emotional, more intensely felt, and, to me anyways, thoroughly melancholy.

Watching the dusty thick sweep of the sunset this evening as the day slipped below the brooding wisp of midnight black that surrounds me now, I could feel my thoughts and imagination settle into a big, comfy chair with a cup of coffee, hoping to spend the next few months enveloped in their favorite mood.

Because life deserves to feel like this. Deep and cool, everything suddenly changed for good with one crisp wind.

Chilled Irony with a side of apple cider

The kind of day where you have to slide open the office window.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, lean back in to make a sarcastic comment to your co-workers.

It smells like fall, the kind of afternoon where I could do something or nothing. I suppose, that since I am writing this, I am doing nothing. But I am on the verge of something. I really am.

Buy some chocolate, and some apples. Make those phone calls, step in every dried leaf along the walk back home.Practice the guitar. Study my Spanish. Keep up with my ballet. Never stop learning. It feels humble and good to still be learning.

I haven't made my bed today, and ten o'clock in the morning feels earlier and earlier. But then, so does midnight.

A little bit more..of that apple cider..from yesterday would be deightful,..so would a walk to the beach. Maybe I will give in to both...

I have to recommend this movie: "Everything is Illuminated" I laughed..very hard. But it's beautiful at the same time. It's a good one.

For the love of Ham and this is all Steve Irwin's fault...

Barcelona.

Most unlikely couple: Walking hand in hand. He was wearing a shirt that said "I cut Scalps Off" She was wearing a shirt that said "Everyone needs Music"...

We got hopelessly lost and had to be transferred by airport security back through the point of no return to retrieve our luggage. The cause of the whole ordeal: the crocodile hunter, of course. I was telling Rebecca that he had passed on, (and she didn't believe me) and recounting how I found out whilst we were walking through the secure exit without our suitcases. In short: Two type Bs don't make a Type A.

Walking through downtown Barcelona at night I thought I had unwittingly stumbled upon the red light district. I saw a building with neon lights in the shape of legs flashing all over. Upon closer inspection, though, I found them to be not legs of exotic dancers, but rather, legs of ham. Sexy Ham. It was a carniceria. Butcher shop. The Spaniards do love their ham though...

New laws for tourists prohibit the entrance of robotic poodles in public parks. Finally, a law I can get on board with.

And here's the bottom line:

In the midst of so much ridiculous (which does make life and travels rather delightful)
I have seen beauty.

Madrid and Barcelona are the most diverse cities. Everyone from everywhere. The languages swirled around me, the faces all so different. We walked el paseo maritimo and parc guille together, myself with all these strangers. You can see the Creator in the creation. Whether it was watching the sun dip into the Mediterranean sea or being shoved into a cattle-car like subway, He can be seen.

And the next life step for me is a very exciting one. I almost always stumble into these things and find that God was leading me unaware the whole time. The dream is more reality every day.

I might need another cafe americano.

he DaVinci Code, Sushi, New Orleans, El Silbedor, and Lorena

So here's what I know:
The big 24 comes in three days...yikes.
I miss my family and the IRS. We always have smashing birthday festivities.

On Sunday I wasn't really with the program...kind of caught up in myself and all my junk. Then a teenager named Lorena walked into church for the first time and sat next to me.
With that, I remembered what we really exist for.

I haven't read a newspaper in maybe over a month. I am ignorant as to what's going on out there. Except I know Spain finally decided to get involved in Lebanon. And that they are dancing on the streets of New Orleans again.

I kind of wish summer would just end already.
Madrid and Barcelona in just two weeks baby! To bad I have so many life decisions to make, no?

About two years after everybody, I am reading The DaVinci Code. He's not all that great of a writer, really. But it's entertaining, despite his use of ridiculous metaphors and redundant words and large words that I know he found in the thesaurus and are not part of anyone's vocabulary. (that was a huge run-on...I never said I was that great of a writer)

Anyone want to send me some new books?

Made some sushi yesterday. Thank God for delicious Japanese cuisine.

I hope you guys aren't suffering from the incessant annoyance of a whistler.
He's lucky we don't have a pistol en nuestra casa.

All in all, life has been, to quote my friend and accomplice Rebecca, "very silly lately..."

Went sailing with the Germans. Yes I did.

And when I say "sailing" I really mean IN A TALL SHIP! Not unlike a pirate ship, actually. But they were not German pirates (that would have been cool though)

So, I went down to meet my friend Veronica for a coffee and to catch up because we haven't seen each other all summer, and somehow I wind up sailing around La Coruna in the hugest (yes, HUGEST is the word) boat I have ever sailed on. It was sooo incredible.
I love when you are just living life and all of a sudden find yourself with the wind against your face and the crisp sea water gently misting you and Germans yelling out sailing commands all around you. I really do.

I am still feeling a little sway, hours later.

(Oh, and to explain a little: All these tall ships from all over Europe are in my beautiful port City of La Coruna for a Tall Ship Regatta. They are sailed by teenagers who do this six week program to learn teamwork and sailing. They race in like six or seven cities that they sail between. Veronica (my friend) has connections with one of the German ones.)


Best day of the week, maybe the month. Hands down.
Do you know those moments when you feel so alive?

November Table Game

I am doing better. I am doing great, really, when I think about it. So I decided to take from Colleen and Thanksgiving tradition (I know it's only August, but I won't have Thanksgiving here in Spain, so I'll play today)
Here are 10 good things:

1. I walk everywhere.

2. I live on the Atlantic coast for the first time in almost 9 years.

3. I have an amazing, beautiful, quirky family...and I love them a ton.

4. I am learning the words to Spanish music on the radio...I have songs that I know (though they are stupid, awful pop songs, this is an exercise in bettering my spanish)

5. Milca lent me her bicycle while she is in Venezuela

6. I am staying in Rob and Nancy's apartment while they are gone, and today I am baking scones.

7. Last night I made balloon animals (something I have only ever done in European countries...) and I learned how to say clown in spanish (payaso...)

8. It's the Festivo Maria Pita, and there are all these free shows...Flamenco this weekend!

9. I am going to Madrid and Barcelona "on business" next month with Rebecca

10. I spend each monday at the beach alone with my thoughts, some good music and a bottle of sunscreen.

The long hot walk.

So, I am laughing at two things. First of all, my friend Nate gave me two seasons of Lost, which I have never watched before and am now completely sucked into. Pathetic. Okay, so funny in how pathetic it is. I knew that would happen.

Also, I am feeling so strangely guilty these days. ¨False guilt¨ is what it´s called when it´s guilt over things besides sin. I mean, not that I don´t sin. But what I am feeling guilty about all the time is stupid. And yet I continue to feel like this. So I´m laughing in a sort of nervous concern for my state of being.

What the heck is wrong with me? You know when you are walking a long way outside and lugging heavy stuff and it´s like a thousand degrees with no wind and you are dripping sweat and all of a sudden you look up to see how far to your front door, realize it´s ridiculously far and then trip and fall down, dropping all your stuff and scraping up your legs?

I am not saying this has happened (well, it probably has...) but that sometimes lately, life has felt like this.

But not always. Just sometimes. Sticky, and painful and overheated and exhauting. Irritating.

Be that as it may, I truly am trying to be content here.

I have several big decisions to make...and soon. And I hate making decisions. In the past, God has just kind of let everything fall into place and I just keep walking and find myself in these places.

I really am trying to hope that that happens this time too. Because I suck at making decisions.

Like right now, I have to decide whether to give into the exhaustion and go watch a couple episodes of Lost, or go work on some projects for work.

We´ll see what happens.

I miss Hot Tamales. Spain doesn´t have very good candy, I must tell you the truth.