It seems strange that an online writing space could seem so significant.  After all, it’s just a portal for my words - meaningless really.  What I write (and what you read) is not impacted by the URL you type to get here…or is it?

I’ve been writing online for just under nine years (my first entry on my ancient geocities webpage is dated December 2000, officially branding me an online journaling dinosaur. Blogs didn’t even exist, back in the day).

For almost a decade I have been spilling my soul onto a computer screen, offering what I have and being given so much more in return.   Through this process the very act of blogging – of taking my words and releasing them into cyberspace – has become an integral part of the art and therapy of writing for me.  A piece never really feels done until I hit publish and let it go.

Crunchy has been my online home since the fall of 2004 and in the space between then and now everything has changed.  Time has a way of doing that, of shaking us up, molding us anew, twisting us around until we’re facing an entirely different direction than we’d ever imagined.  For quite some time now, this space has not felt quite right.  It represents another space, another time, a different focus.  Even though I told myself over and over that the words were all that mattered, I was reluctant to write here.

Beyond the seismic shifts in my personal life over the past two years, I have also been growing as an artist.  Owning and naming my creative self. Exploring what my words and photographs mean and how they can work together to fulfill my desire to create change, inspire people, build community.  I wanted a space that would represent my desire to explore all of those things, a fresh start.

And so, from now on I’ll be writing at {peace. love. free}.  Inspired by the Amy Steinberg song that I once wrote about here, I hope my new online home will be a place of inspiration, of community and a place where I can dig deeper into my writing and my personal photographic projects.  I’m still going to be me   (and I’ll still probably be a slacker blogger) but I hope my new blog gives me the space to stretch out, relax and see what happens.

Hope to see you over there, please add me to your reader and take a moment to say hello while you’re there.

PS: I’ve still likely got some bugs to work out, some fonts I want to change, etc - but I figured I could keep fiddling with it forever, or I could just start already…let me know if things are not working right!

I found this tonight, via Gypsy Girl, and knew it was sent to me for you.  Although it may not seem like it in this moment, you have everything you need, and much more.  You always have.  You always will. And for the moments when you need to lay it all down and rest – we’ve got you covered.

The Layers
by Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.

When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.

In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not in the litter."

Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

~ Benjamin Button

~~~

He always told me that the freckles scattered across my legs and arms were worm holes, and I believed him.  After all, they did look suspiciously like the dark spots on the crab apples littering the ground beneath the trees in the lower field.  I worried about this; about when the worms got in, and how on earth they would ever get out. He teased me mercilessly on my summer visits, nabbing me as I ran through the room and trapping me between his legs - in what he called a bear trap - tickling me until I gasped for breath. 

He was a woodsman, like his father before him.  I remember the softness of his worn flannel work shirts, the way the scent of the forest clung to his skin, and how his fingers seemed permanently stained with dirt and tractor grease.

He was somehow different from the rest of our noisy crew. He mostly held himself outside the fray, observing the chaos with quiet amusement, chewing on a bit of wheat or a tall piece of field grass plucked outside.  I had a sense, even as a young child, that he was far more comfortable in a quiet stand of trees than he would ever be in the midst of his highly social family.

Today word came, traveling as it does amongst family, from aunt to aunt to mother and finally to me. 

You know how your uncle feels about gays and lesbians? He doesn’t think it is right at all.  Your aunt says it would be best if you didn’t come up to visit.

I’m still for a moment, blinking back surprise and sudden tears.  My throat is tight and I summon a bit of bravado that I don’t really feel.

Fine.  His loss.

Yes. My mother agrees quietly.

~~~

On my last visit home this was all just beginning to make its slow, painful ascent to the surface.  After six weeks of idyllic vacation I returned to the desert and within days the foundation gave way beneath my feet, beginning a free fall that lasted for almost two years.  I was nervous about coming home, about finding the courage to present myself to those who have known me since birth, and to stand without apology before them.

I’ve been here for two weeks, and it’s been so uneventful as to be anticlimactic.  I had an idea that my differences – that sense of otherness that has been my companion often on this journey - would be more profound here.  Instead it’s been elusive, and I have to remind myself that anything has changed at all. 

At home now, amongst the green and the water and an earth that seems infinitely more solid beneath my feet, I’m reduced to my essence.  All the rest swirls out of my grasp and what’s left is just me.

It’s a lesson in layers, in all that I carry with me by choice, all that I hold on to, to protect and comfort and make fierce.  All of it belongs in the desert, it seems.  It has no footing here by the sea.

Without all the labels and identities and protective spells wound tight around me, I am open and simplified.  My breaths are drawn deeper and I can allow the moments to steal over me and make me still. The drive to go-go-go eases up, and all that is necessary is to just be.

From the nomadic childhood existence of a preacher’s daughter, I drew comfort in the eternal sameness of my summer home in the country, nestled along a rutted country road in a protected curve of the Bay of Fundy. No matter what happened elsewhere during the year, this place remained untouched.  It is only now, having changed more than I ever thought possible, that I realize the root of that comfort lies in the knowledge that I never really changed at all.

The crashing waves and the green grass and the ancient trees  greet me and accept me as they always have.  The air, electric with the buzzing of thousands of insects, touches my face and finds me no different than I was before.  And when I raise my eyes upward at night in the darkness only found deep in the country, the thick blanket of stars do not wonder who I am. They’ve known me forever already.

Nothing changes, really.  Like the rocks on the beach, we are broken down, carried places, placed in new formations, but always, at the heart of it, exactly the same as we began.  Even if we don’t at first recognize ourselves, we still belong, still exist, are still a part of the same infinite whole. 

~~~

His loss?

Not really.  Our loss.  All of us.  His and mine and theirs and yours.   

Don’t you see? I want to scream. Don’t you understand? I’m the same girl I was then.

Worm holes and all.

On Saturday, Singapore will see the first public display of support for its LGBT citizens in which thousands are expected to gather in a public park to create a giant pink dot to be photographed from the sky.

“Do you support the freedom of LGBT people to love? Then show your support by joining our smart mob at Hong Lim Park on 16th May! This is NOT a protest nor a parade, just a simple call for open-minded Singaporeans to come together to form a pink dot, of which aerial photographs will be taken. This pink dot is a celebration of diversity and equality, and a symbol of Singapore’s more inclusive future.”

Everyone knows someone who is a part of the LGBTQ community. But do you know how much inequality and prejudice impacts our lives, and how much every last little bit of your support means? If you don’t know, ask us.

We’ll tell you.

Sometimes I feel like an inspiration catcher, put myself out into the world just to catch snippets of grace, things of beauty, breaths full of wisdom….and to pass them on.

This came my way today - and how could I not feel inspired after reading words like the ones on this print:

“i want to enter your sacred ground,
to hold you in the depth of your spirit,
to be surrounded by the mists of your soul
and to soak in the essence of you.
it’s a giving and a taking i honor quietly,
solemnly. if your door is open, i am there.”

I love that she named her business “Bone Sigh Arts”…those words are a sigh, a giant exhale, right from her core and right to mine.

I’ve only just had time to look through some of her prints - I can’t imagine what other treasures lie within.