Tuesday, September 23, 2008

footnotes

Some days it feels like you’re chipping away at a forty-foot brick wall with a plastic teaspoon. Other days a whole chunk of that wall collapses like a piece of stale gingerbread and you’re left gobsmacked at the amount of daylight you've let in, with your own two hands.
I am staring at a broad expanse of daylight. There is now more daylight in my immediate vicinity than there is wall. Mainly the wall is at my feet, where I can’t really see it but where it can easily trip me over if I spend too much time with my head up, staring at the sky.
I guess today I tripped. I fell. On my face. But I got back up with the help of someone who I really needed, and now I am even more determined to step over that wall and breathe in that daylight and stare at the sky and open myself up to new possibilities. I am stronger right now than I have ever been.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

i love you mrs parker


My land is bare of chattering folk,
The clouds are low along the ridges.
And sweet's the air with curly smoke
From all my burning bridges.


- Dorothy Parker

With thanks to my sister, who sent me this by email in January this year, when it struck me as wise and funny (although not in an LOL way, because there's a special place reserved in hell for the person who invented that particular non-word) but didn't really resonate the way it does today. I'm feeling kind of itchy-footed and a bit excited, although I'm not sure why, and to paraphrase another great wordsmith I am standing at two diverging roads, checking the signposts, wondering if I'm holding the street directory upside down. A voice in my head is yelling at me to run but I've never been one to rush in. Which makes me wonder why now, of all the times in my life, I really want to.