On the advice of Hafiz, I got dressed for dancing last night.  And for a few peak musical moments I think I may have lingered on the fringes of God’s Ward – no stretcher needed.  But this morning I sleep in past sunrise, brew coffee at 8:30, move slowly.

This luxury is mine.  Jeb is with Rex for two more hours and I continue to flip through old journals.  Details for Excerpts from the Coastal Dwelling – my little series here about my time in California this past December – are housed on the pages of one journal.  So I’ve been perusing and piecing together entries that can weave the story.  Last installment ended with the question “Can I trust my heart?” (more on what I discovered in future “Excerpts” posts)

Committed to following the heart thread, I’ve decided to answer a call for submissions for a literary magazine.  Deadline is at the end of this month.  The story I want to tell takes place in ’95 and I’ve only got old journals to fill in the details.

Back then I was 23 and had left New England in my Subaru on a mission to park my car on the West Coast, load my backpack and catch a plane to Kauai.

Somewhere around Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, my life took a turn.  Within three weeks I underwent a surgery that removed an ovary, abandoned my Kauai plan and drove to British Colombia, where I would live and heal on a remote island for the next year.

Pages from the journal of this time are full of questions about my life’s direction, my creative expression, and lessons in trusting my intuition.  Old love letters fall from the binding.  A candy bar wrapper hosts poetry from that Christmas when snow stopped the ferries and I was marooned in a houseful of French Canadians and Dead Can Dance.  There is my hand drawn key to ancient Runes.    And plenty of words about the male characters that touched my young heart on that misty island.

on that rainy day goodbye
your lips were slippery
and I didn’t know if the salt came
from you or the sea
grey beneath the apple tree
you had stars in your eyes
and the earth in your hair
and my fingers in your hands
all tangled with stones and shells and seaweed

the swans treaded ripples by the shore
bowing to your mission

staff in hand
life on your back
I told you you were beautiful
then passed you by

Oh, such a vagabond in love was I!  Hardly.  Love and leave has never been my mode of operation, which is probably why I wrote about that rare scene.

There’s a fifteen year span between two journals, yet the themes are still the same.  I want to write.  I love to sing.  I walk in nature and wonder about love and life and my place in the world.  I seek connection with myself and the Cosmos.

Twenty-three or thirty-seven, my hand keeps writing the word Trust.