2009 In The Rear-View Mirror

A year ago I had just moved from a country that didn’t want me to a bare echoey white place hidden under a stifling canopy of tall dark trees. I adore trees, and loved lying in bed looking at green branches, but the bare echoey place had an inner emptiness that rang loudly in my ears.

Plus it had weird carpet.

In the spring I discovered forested trails and alternate universes. I sat, motionless, sometimes for hours, staring out through a skylight and eventually emerging into a giddy, childlike state, a person who thought lakes were oceans and wondered whether she should be driving real cars.

A year ago I had a job, a sort of a job, a full time gig for part time pay, plus a promise of a someday full time pay for the time I was putting in, so I wrote and I wrote and I edited and I wrote my little heart out. In February that world exploded and it limped along through May, and then I was done. No job, no pay.

I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane and found my way through a maze of fears. Later, a motorcycle fell on me.

In June I moved to a smaller place near the water and near the trails and across the street from a banyan tree and in a community. The Magic Bus drives up from time to time and takes people places. I look out my tiny window and see a slice of ocean. The place isn’t hidden, is sometimes a fishbowl with the world looking in, but it fits me better. I have an easel and paints, and I write. The sun shone on this place and now the rain falls gently on my sari-clad zen room and my bicycles smile through their gears.

In July my intentions caught up with the world.

In August I brought my heart-pieces closer and together we walked my world, now theirs. We ate 18 pounds of blueberries. We laughed. We parted with new paths woven between us.

I discovered a box.

Summer tumbled into autumn and soon the bright crunchy leaves became dank and moldering and slick underfoot. Outward turned inward. Not being a joiner — ever — I joined and joyed. I sang. I found a home, at least for now.

Now, inward, I sing. I joy. I raise silent lips in inner song, singing my heart into wholeness. I breathe and become one with my heartbeat, and with yours. I walk and feel aliveness in the dirt under my soles, in each sparkling raindrop on my face, in each leaf and sound and sigh. I touch hearts and they touch mine.

What do I wish for 2010? More. More of what comes next.