alone it must seek

We haven't yet boarded the aircraft, or even packed our bags, or sold our belongings.

My dog lies next to the bookcase, sleeping peacefully, while behind my sternum there are butterflies and kittens scratching. I am giving her up, and her canine companion, and the bookcase she leans her head against.

The period hangs at the end of that sentence like the weight on a fishing line. It plunks the surface of the water then disappears below to a place I cannot see. I wait for something to tug, for something to give me a reason to pull it back up to the surface. I hope that a slippery wiggling thing will fight me and that I will eventually subdue it and hold it in my hands, loving it in the way it does not want to be loved.

I am running away from the snow, the barren fields and the terrible food. I am running from democrat and republican and tea party. I am running from pickup trucks and walmart.

I am running toward the unknown, toward a place I only connect with in my dream. I want to be surrounded by the sea, trapped on an island of rolling green.

I'll be testing my independence again, my ability to create connection out of nothing. I am taking my camping gear, clothes and toothbrush. My mate is going with me.

Life is just chock full of hellos and goodbyes. Sometimes we get to control the timing, most of the time we don't. Isn't it just great that most of time we don't?

Love of the connections I am leaving behind has had me feeling raw these past weeks. I am so in love both with what I leave behind and with the leaving itself. This paradox is the sweetest pain. I bathe in it for as long as I can, then come out when it feels I will drown.

"How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.

Long were the days of pain I have spent within walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain without regret? Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and i cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.

It is not a garment I cast off this day,

but a skin that I tear with my own hands.

Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but

a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst.

Yet i cannot tarry longer.

The sea that calls all things unto her calls me

and I must embark.

For to stay, though the hours burn in the night,

is to freeze and crystallize

and be bound in a mould.

Fain would I take with me all that is here.

But how shall I?

A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings.

Alone it must seek the ether."

...............from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

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