There is a fire in my soul...

There is a fire in my soul.
It consumes everything in its path.
It asks no questions,
gives no explanation.

In my wake, a path of scorched earth.
Bearing witness, only, to the fire contained inside.
As the forest burns the debris of dead, making way for life,
so the beauty of the new rises from my wake.

Be still and listen to the cracking bursts,
watch the fire rage.
Its fury reigns the landscape,
at least this day.

Silence your fear and quiet your mind.
The new will rise and flourish.
And some day, some day,
you will wish the fire back, once more.

itnerary...

For as long as I can remember I've been leaving home. When I was a little girl I would lay in the grass and look at the clouds trying to find a way to get one of them to take me away.  They never seemed to listen.  I made big plans with incredible detail about how I would leave. In college I planned to apply to Oxford for my masters degree. I constructed the greatest ex-pat life for myself. But life didn't seem to listen. I never even applied.

I remember having a United Nations ambassador come to my school as a girl, he spoke seven langauges fluently and I was in awe. I dreamed of growing up to join the UN or work in foreign service. And every country I've ever traveled to I searched out the ambassador's house I dreamt of the life I could have there.

I would spend my summer days going on bike rides as a girl to farthest boudaries of the surrounding neigborhoods making up stories about the houses, traveling to distant lands with each street I passed.

For as long as I can remember I have been leaving. Never putting down solid roots, always waiting for my great adventure. I suppose life is full of compromises. And I've made many.

I officially made it 108 miles from my childhood house. Not quite my ideal itinerary. Sometimes I start to itch as if I've become allergic to this place I cannot call home. I wonder how long it will take before the city swallows me whole. Or before I break the walls down and never look back. I wonder which part of myself I will give into.

I wonder at the madness of it all. Of a little girl who has spent her life with eyes addicted to the horizon. 

He is

You could live a thousand lifetimes and never meet a man like him. He is the kind of man that people write stories about. The kind of man that women want to love and men want to be. He is the strongest man I have ever seen. He has the kind of strength the runs not from a possessed source or an obsessed following, but from an inner reserve - steady and endless. The kind of strength the builds and multiplies; the kind of strength the forges landscapes.

Simply to see him is to know these things. And to know him is to be inspired by these things. There is a grace and nobility in his movement and demeanor. A sort of unmentioned benevolence. I suppose most people would call it charisma or charm. But it is more than that. It is a pure authenticity of person. Not the kind of self important personage found in many of his kind - but rather a trueness to his self and others that cannot be defined. 

He is intoxicating, thought provoking, inspiring, and motivating. He has my truest admiration and deepest respect. Two things I don't often bestow on anyone and never both on the same person. There are some people that alter you - not because they control you or manipulate you, but because who they are resonates with you. And when you've met them you cannot see the world or yourself as you once did. He is one of those people. 

I will write stories about him. They will take many forms. Some will be for the world to read, some of them will be only whispers in the night, and some will be silent even - kept safely inside of me. But there isn't a way I would rather spend my words than on him. On the many ways you can string words together to create his likeness.

He is the most perfect symmetry.

we little fools

How foolish are we. We judge one man by the sins of another. We look disparagingly at others for the faults in ourselves. We speak and act from our own fear and pain in an attempt to protect that which by doing so we will only break. We have none in life to truly blame but ourselves yet we seldom accept any responsibility for the outcome of our lives. We live in despair when we have little to ever lement. We are short sighted - even those of us who find pride in our acuitY. We turn heroes into villains and villains into heroes for our gain and vanity. We look to future and view only the past. we are mortal but fancy ourselves divinely inspired in all that we do and yet accept not destiny or retribution unless it be of our own making. We return to our folly time and time again yet regard it as character. We are but little fools. We count pride above appreciation and delicacy above integrity. We think cold and unyielding force will turn an advantage and forget that the greater motivation of warmth and love drives all of us. We abandon encouragement in favor of punishment. We expect much yet give very little. And at the end of each day we count our measure in what surrounds instead of what is within us. We are but little fools.

the kingmaker's daughter

I am the kingmaker's daughter. For me life is found in the solutions. Life is simply a series of solutions - how do I pay my bills, how do I feed my family, how do I get along with the people I meet. These are all solutions that make up life.

Problems are no more than air for me - I breathe them, they are my fuel, my life source. I am the kingmaker's daughter - a tool built to solve even the most difficult problems. Bold in the face of the impossible, ready for the challenge. It should make for a life without fear but I would be lying if I said it is so.

The reality is that I am a tool and people are people. People are usually quite fond of my abilities happy to utilize me and I am always willing and ready. I suppose this should make me highly valuable and sought after, fir for a purpose. The problem with tools is that they are easily disposed of and replaced when they break, as all tools do - as all people do. I am not so arrogant as to think that I am the most elaborate or well suited or unbreakable tool of my kind. And thus my only fear is that I will one day break and be discarded of for will no longer be suitable. it seems an inevitable fate - a problem without a solution.

Its a problem I have drilled through and worked over in my mind even now as the odd hours of the morning fade into sunlight. And seems to me that the only resolution to my problem, the only thing capable of unraveling my fear, is love.

Love chooses to mend instead of discard. When we love we do so accepting all faults, all imperfections, all broken pieces and dedicate ourselves without condition. At least this is how I love.

But people are not consistent. Even the best people are up against their own fears, insecurities and imperfections - their own struggles. It seems unfair to expect someone else to carry my burden as well.

In the end I suppose what I fear is human nature - the tendancy of people to discard what they do not care for, what they cannot tolerate, what taxes or stresses them. And how can another person ease a fear that is based in human nature? The only way to combat human nature is qith understanding and that requires highest level of intimacy and compassion. But mostly people hide from these things trying to protect their dark spots their vulnerabilities from view.

You see I fear human nature not because I see it in others but because I see it's tendencies in myself - in my compulsion to find solutions. I know sometimes the best solution is to discard what does not work. And if such things are in me I suppose I believe they are in everyone. Maybe my fear is that everyone is like me but more reckless and less compassionate. Maybe I just want to proven wrong. Oh how I do hope the rest of the world is far better than I am.

But I am still the kingmaker's daughter and the day is risen so I must put my fear away.

rabbit holes and knots

there's not much else i could be - for better or worse, i am utterly myself. at times i  know that is simply not enough - at times i am so utterly aware of every tiny, malformed fold, crack, crevasse and the like that come from that self. and at times i know that it is just too much - flooding over the brim of my container. i have tried to be different - to hold back, to abide, to follow a set order, to be more of somethings and less of others. i cannot bear it. so from the moment you know me i am that i am. i have nothing to give but authenticity and quite honestly i am content that way.

i know myself too well - i've spent years locked inside my own head - unwinding knots and wandering down rabbit holes. you see in there has always been the closest thing to home that i know. inside i never have to explain myself to break my theories, discoveries, connections, and work down into pieces for others to have. inside i can sit down surround by the data and watch the patterns unfold. i see them take shape one by one, overlay and move on, pairing and splitting like an elegant dance. inside everything just is, and that is comfortable.

but inside i am alone.

and people weren't meant to be alone.

i ventured back amongst the living. my days fill with noise and chatter - so. much. information. a constant flow of stimuli that never shuts down. and thus i  never shut down. i hardly sleep sometimes usually when i am avoiding analyzing something, because if i sleep i will unwind the knot and be forced to deal with the reality. perhaps i knew this was there. i also knew it would be uncomfortable to integrate. there is no poetry for failure. there is no crescendo dancing on a sheet of music filled with staccato. there is only punctuation.

i missed it. i chose the wrong frame of reference. i assumed what made the pattern fit. that is everyone's fatal mistake. i forgot to question the assumptions. i glanced at the pattern and it fit. i assumed consistency where it had always been. that is not a mistake i make. i question everything. i notice everything whether i want to or not - whether it matters or not. maybe i let it go because i wasn't equipped to change it. maybe i let it go because otherwise i would have to realize that the one thing i have always been able to do right regardless of circumstance would have to be examined. you see there is only one result to that examination - i am not enough. it is a simple reality and one i know all too well of myself. it is impossible to be everything - we are limited, we are human. but i have worked tireless for 11 years to prove that i could be enough - that i could rework the assumptions; that i could give 1000 times as much; that i could find a solution; that i could do the impossible; be the impossible. i always knew it was a fruitless endeavor but it had become therapeutic to me - a kind of rebalancing.

and now everything goes under the microscope.

and sleep will escape me for another day.

but tomorrow is a new day and i am sure it will be one to put my melancholy self-disappointment to rest. the sun will rise and the day will be filled with noise and will be as it always is. i will adapt and normalize and be none the worse for the wear.

you know: curiosity killed the cat.

the reality of an introvert

Somedays flow more naturally than others. It's like I have a maximum capacity for social interaction before I have to retreat into the sanctuary of my own thoughts away from the outer chaos. I watch other people and it seems like they don't register the same level of chaos in the outer world that I do. Perhaps they are oblivious or I am over thinking. I'm not sure if there's a balance between those or if one extreme is correct. What I do know is that I cannot always be engaged.

There is so much to process when I am engaget in what's going on in social settings. I automatically become incredibly aware of my environment and the state of the people in it and my concern is engaged and I cannot help but feel responsible on some level for those around me.  Typically I feel that my reservoir for pain is incredibly large - perhaps unusually - and thus I am capable of taking on the pain and discomfort of others to help relieve the burden. But at some point I become exhausted by the social engagement and just want to hide away in a cave with just my thoughts.

I live so much inside my head that most of my reality is mainly found there. Maybe that's hard for the people around me. They feel they don't know me and that I am elusive. I am not really I just forget to let myself out of my thoughts - i forget that others are not inside of my inner world with me. And I assume they are comfortable.

I am working on this. But it's a process far from refinement.