Every day I am restored by the grace to begin again. Actually, every moment is such. All the large beginnings: leaving husbands, letting go of lives so carefully gathered & nervously lived, turning away from daughters & lovers whose love for me was as real as my love for them…

I am who I am because each relationship began & ended. I am free & unbound & if I had hair, it’d be blowing in the wind of my life now passing by.

I am here to start dreams – though this means my expertise rises from endings. For all passages require one closed door & one that’s opening. Doorways equal transitions (which is why we forget what it was we wanted in the other room as we pass through them.)

Walking from one door to another requires a special energy that gathers as desire rachets down tightly, curling upon itself until the tension binds into a release. All else is wished away. The “New” laps around me like a litter of puppies, soft, round, happy, panting & yipping in eagerness to be experienced.

Even from this, I remove myself at times. I wonder about me. Every month brings a new moon & a full, the bright rebalances the dark. I initiate by becoming an initiate following an initiative.

I have done harm, yes. The landscape is littered with what I probably should have done. But I picked my way carefully through the detritus I’d made of my relationships, through the hash made of my relationships by the others in them. I clawed out of the spoils to that bright new day of welcome opening for me, as though I was the only pure thing it would ever see.

I trust with a full heart. I unfold as though the sun will shine forever. I keep believing, as all the songs say I must do. And when the fear sends me scurrying for the coat pockets to check for lost, linty money, or shaking the piggy bank for funds to finish the month, I live with it. I recover my joy whether there are enough coins to rattle or one single jingle.

In coming this far, I have taken the journey home. There is no arrival for I am always where I am: at home. There is wisdom here, and courage. There is heart-mind, order & determination. “All the time I’ve wasted is given back to me”* I’ve learned it’s okay to draw a blank at first. Sometimes a close encounter with a rhino & subsequent clean-up is the best I can manage. Whatever.

I don’t flicker anymore. I burn. People are singed near me. I have gone Samurai, a world-warrior forged by life’s forgiveness. Each place I have halted, I have gathered more.

If I seem part of a crowd, it’s only because I’ve stood still & the others have caught up. I can wait for them to pass me. Living alone is not my fear. Alone is one letter off of God: All-One. And I am all-in-one now.

I’m accustomed to the unexpected; I accept the occasional maladroit gifts I offer. Things usually come up right though it may be by a longer route.

Dreams always come true (at least mine.) If it isn’t in my life, I haven’t dreamed of it. I have come to view this as choosing, not limiting. Days march past on the calendar like ants, purposeful, fulfilling, each carrying one burden to release at the end of the day as a pearl of sustenance. Every before becomes an after. I sleep in my dreams like silk pajamas.

The unexpected turns into synchronicity.

It’s taken some time, but I believe in me & that is only because I’m a fragment of my own imagination, burning candles kindled at both ends. The light’s better that way, when seeking blessings.

“It happened without a fight

Something is new about me

I feel it with each breath

There’s a majesty about me

A majesty about me…

I feel it in my self

A new heaven a new earth

Is all that I see” *

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*lines from “I’m Changed” composed by Ricky Byars-Beckwith.

I’m Changed sung by Angel Travis