All that I am

BRONZE STATUE, KEUKENHOF GARDENS, HOLLAND

I have much to learn—not to mention unlearn—if I’m serious about this blog. Especially if I’m going to stay true to the whole musings from the moment spirit, and to my great desire to write not just what is true and real, but to do it while it’s still alive and breathing, its heart still pumping away. It’s not my propensity, which seriously leans first toward procrastination, then to beating words unconscious once I get started. It’s a lesson not just for writing, but for living. Relax into the moment, really be in it, and then let it flow on when it’s over. Maybe even gracefully. How much simpler life would be; no more crying over spilled milk. Not after the fact anyway.

Living in the moment. The trouble is, I’ve had a lot of spilled milk this last year. More than I've ever had. Gallons of it, pouring off the table, puddling all over the floor. My marriage of thirty-one years ended, and I moved out of our family home into a small apartment in Oakland. Our nest emptied… our fabulous, brave now-grown birds flying high, and to long distances. I’ve had to leave my dog, and just this past week, our house sold. Pretty much everything I considered sacrosanct cut loose. As I’ve watched it all float away, I’ve witnessed myself react to each moment in every conceivable way. I’ve denied it, wrestled, argued, and plead with it, run with it, kicked and screamed at it, railed against it, sobbed through it. And sometimes, remarkably, relaxed into it with a surrender and a peace that startled me.

I know I want to be as free with my writing as I’ve been with my emotions over this past year. Rather than editing, rewriting, and attempting to craft to the point of the ridiculous, I want to seize each moment and spontaneously run with it. Like the woman in the statue in the photo; raw, naked, improper, inappropriate, untamed. I want to stop judging, let go, and let it all hang out. Sign up, show up, sing off key, mix my metaphors, maybe even misspell a word or miss a point. In short, I want to be—long to be—crave being—joyously and unapologetically everything that I am.

I met her while on a spontaneous trip to Keukenhof and fell immediately in love. Standing there, on a gorgeous May day a week past the tulip's peak, while I was supposed to be still cloistered on spiritual retreat a long train ride away, I was mesmerized. I looked her up and down and all around. Again, and again. So bold as to be hard to look at. Yet unable to look away.

So hats off to this awesome new muse, whose photo I’m going to enlarge, frame, and hang. Who inspires me not just in writing, but, obviously, in life also. For any line dividing the two is an illusion. This bronze goddess who is so apparently in the moment that the moment is quite simply all there is.

Which is actually more true than we can ever really know.