adieu

it's so strange the way that along with the passing time pass friends, memories, jobs, loves, experiences, lessons, etc...etc. with each closing chapter, we're faced with yet another set of goodbyes, another rendezvous with the need to fill up the spaces those goodbyes left you with, and another need to reshape/redefine/rethink who we want to be and who we will be with the new people that will eventually fill those new spaces.

i'm trying to come to a place where goodbyes are less of an end, and more of a beginning for the chance of glorious reunions, endless reminiscing, and an opportunity to find new people to love and be loved by. rather than it being a moment of loss, goodbyes can be chances to grow separately, embark on our own adventures, and share with one another what our chosen paths have shown us. rather than greeting the conclusion of yet another season of life with tears and the desire to resist the imminent changes the coming season is sure to bring, instead this season should be welcomed and adored, with an ever-increasing amount of people to share life with.

out with the old (meaning freeing the ones i've come to adore these past 4 years to be who & where they must be for now), and in with the new (meaning homes/adventures/companions/and more.)

breathing in the breeze

sometimes a change of perspective is what we most need. this can mean a reinterpretation of memories of the past that give you some sense of new found peace/freedom. or this can mean taking the hand of your love, the hand promising your feet won't lose their hold on those steep slants of the tiled roof, so that you can stand tall with the trees.

from that very place, that space where it's just you, and me, and the trees and the breeze and that moon...that ever-present, lively moonshine pouring down and wiping our minds clean of all those thoughts/ideas/feelings that when you get down to it, just don't matter. there we both can be pure, there we both can be still and know who and what and where and why we love, why we're waking day after day.

and even though we have to eventually leave this midnight oasis, for now our feet really have left the ground. and as for the ground, it can't steal the moments we just made, the beauty we just shared.

pounding.

there are moments when you're most certainly more alive than others.

be it those times that you're lost in the growing pound of your heart, the faint taste of salt seasoning your thirsty lips, and your weary lungs drawing in the morning air that keeps the cycle going, while your legs are screaming as you force them to continue along the winding country road, 13.1 miles and counting.

or when you're rolling on to your back, your breath buried somewhere deep in your chest from the impact, your hands grazing the newly exposed flesh of your chin and chest brought to life by your own lapse of carelessness. remembering the moment of reveling in the freedom of the cool summer air kissing your face changing abruptly to a face full of earth and a body full of  shock and a mountain bike full of devastation.

or maybe those times that you're standing on the edge of certain death, toeing the edge of a three hundred and nine foot waterfall, tasting the almighty fall's mist that's hitting your tongue, swallowing the warm air around you.

or when you're climbing/crawling/dragging yourself up mt. sopris stone by stone, enveloped by clouds and trying to ignore the adrenaline threatening to overtake you as you peer left and right to immediate drop offs that whisper of your potential death.

these are the times when you become aware of what should be a self-evident truth, though one we so often forget - the truth of your very existence, the reality of you and your breath and heartbeat and sweat and blood and what we westerners have labeled your 'soul.' it's these experiences that shake you from the insidious complacency always threatening to overtake you. though it may mean anxiety, though it may mean ache, at least you know this one truth:

you're alive.

efuerza

those days when it used to be that stumbling into the lines which were drawn to show you who and how and what you were supposed to be, those are the most fruitless, hated days. the ones where the path of resistance was the end sought, the path that bore the person so horribly average that there was nothing distinguishable left about you. the path where you'd swallow those words that might have been spoken had you been able to resist, and stuff yourself into those clothes stamped and mass-produced to death, and blare the so-called music proclaiming so many things you truly would never do so yourself.


don't be branded. don't fall in line. and most certainly, do not remain silent.

molds

as i find myself going to bed on this blissfully ordinary summer night, i'm thinking about all the moments that brought me here. the moments of dragging myself out of bed to face another day of high school, another day filled with screaming lockers and glaring bells and florescent lights. the moments of dreaming of a new place, the place that would help me discover that person i so desperately desired to create, the place that came to be here - this place. my two-bedroom apartment on folsom st. with its' big windows, cramped kitchen, and hotel room carpet: the place where i now can be still and know that i am me, que soy yo, that i am free.

free from all the glaring bells and probing eyes and jagged words that once kept me from finding and meeting and growing this person that i am and have been since i found this two-bedroom apartment with its bubblegum pink bathroom counter top and squeaky, aged floors. this freedom is one i so often forget, but so adore to remember. the freedom to be veg/pescatarian depending on which day you ask me, the freedom to be a 22 year old girl that loves whiskey and ice-cold 40 oz. O.E.'s, and the freedom to be someone dreaming of a phD in cultural anthropology (that one still makes my heart jump a bit).

this freedom...it's beautiful.