Saturday, April 28, 2012

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

The day after tomorrow will be my twenty ninth birthday.
(Whoa. No matter what the number happens to be, I'll bet every birthday feels like a milestone...that is, until years have passed and you have to shuffle through memories of cities and goings-on to discover which year was which. That is already happening for me, by the way, but for the moment I'll pretend it isn't.)

What does it mean to be twenty nine, I wonder?

Twenty eight meant travel, new opportunities, books and interviews and emergence from a closet I'd put myself in, full of fear, just to find out that it was never any big deal in the first place that I happen to be what was once termed "mystic" and now is termed lots of other things...

It also meant a move to paradise, fairy country, and soon a temporary (at least) move out of this land will come, just as I'm getting used to it here. Figures.

No matter. As a good friend told me yesterday, when I mentioned that I've had a curious ulcer-like feeling in my stomach for the past few days, since my imminent future was turned abruptly on its ear, something is bound to happen.

And even when we think we know what will come next, we're often surprised anyway. Thinking you know is just something that makes you more comfortable, in my experience. Or, I guess, less comfortable if those plans change. So there's a blessing.

"Don't think about it," he told me.
"If you trust whatever you believe in," (this object of belief was of a Divine sort, I'm sure - and trust it I do, although I sometimes forget, obviously,) "then you can just stop thinking about it and know that you'll be there when you're there."

Or something like that. It made sense at the time.

So this new blog is going to help me keep my thoughts in order as I go wherever I'll go. I named it after something I was told in my undergraduate Interpersonal Effectiveness class. We were a class of twelve, who basically sat around and psychoanalyzed each other. It was awesome. And my teacher, Dr. Stacy Dunn, was the first woman I'd ever directly experienced who could be lovely and feminine, and at the same time kick corporate (or, in this case, academic) ass - a true role model for me.
What I was told in the class was that listening to me tell a story was either highly entertaining or maddening, depending on the listener. I wove and wound around, following "butterfly trails," but eventually coming back to my point and reaching my destination sooner or later, with a lot of random stuff thrown in for flavor.

Or, if you were the type of person who liked to know the Five W's and nothing else, then I took forever to say anything.

(Don't say I didn't warn you.)

So, the point of this introductory entry is to say that this blog will likely twist and turn all over the place, as my literal, mental, physical, and spiritual paths do the same over the course of this summer, and maybe longer.

We'll see what happens...
(Yesterday's buttercups. I love how spring's yellow flowers seem to actually glow.)