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So, my viewing public, as you may have guessed, I've been on hiatus. I needed a chance to sort through the wreckage of the last year and dwell in the possibilities of the new. Since, we all know that I like a little bit of symbolism... my birthday fell at a convenient time this year. Not a New Year, but my new year. So I shut down my facebook, my mobile, my email (mostly), and walked away from this little cyberspace for a moment. Please don't take it personally.

So why the need to regroup, you ask? While I don't think I can reasonably claim that this past year was the worst year of my life-- that's a toss up between my 7th and 19th years-- I can say that it hasn't been my favorite. If you are curious as to why, please feel no bonds to decorum. Ask and you shall receive. But in this little resurrection post I may attempt to redeem this last year by highlighting just some of the 'new and good' that emerged from it. (An idea clearly pilfered from Susie.)

Without further ado...

The new: a penchant for fermented green tea leaf salads, a newfound affection for cats, red dancing shoes, a real relationship with my (rather wonderful) brother, the perfect recipe for Moroccan almond and orange tort, a sense of closure.

The good: (in addition to all of the above) Clara's transformation, a deep awareness and awe of some of the friendships we've formed, , a return to my writing ways, picnics in the park (ok, ok, parks plural in London and New York and Bogota), feeling uncomfortable.

And so with that I bid farewell to my last year. Or at least make peace with it. Or at least try to. Can't really exorcise the past without denying the future, or at least I don't believe we can. So, yes, I'll hold on to the lessons and unfortunately probably some of the anxieties of the past year of my life. But let me say this here in this strange little space that's neither public nor private: if you find me dwelling too long in the dramas of the past year, remind me that if I want to revisit them I should A) do so through the writing of my dissertation (ok, that only pertains to the dramas of the field) and B) dwell in the continuing possibilities. Tune in next time and perhaps, perhaps, perhaps I will share some of the possibilities and promises of the months ahead.

much love

missing you

The weather on this (nearly) All Hallows Eve is perfect for a fire and a glass of wine and secrets whispered in a loved one's ear...

So on this cold winter's night, I'm thinking of you and missing you...

much love.

enough

***Please be warned that I am not editing this… just writing what I feel in this particular moment. Don't take it too seriously.***

Right now, I am on the train back to London. I am writing this in the hopes that my staring at a computer screen will stop the woman sitting across the aisle from asking if I'm alright. Our beloved whippet, Trumpet, better known as Trump, died this morning. While this alone would probably make me cry, the tears that are welling up in my eyes, the ones that would lead this woman to ask if I am ok, are not coming forth in love or sadness (those may come later) but in anger. I am furious… at fate or randomness or, actually, in my case, God.

So if I am, in fact, not a complete and total idiot and if you are out there, God, and you happen to be tuning in today: what is wrong with you? Truth be told, some mornings I think it would be better not to believe in anything… that it would be a greater sign of hope to embrace a chaotic world than a distant god. I hear the criticisms all the time: if there is a God that he's a sicko who gets his kicks from our suffering or worse an absentee-landlord. Lately, though I still believe, I've not got much in the way of a retort .So if you are there: Enough…Enough… Enough…
Enough… ENOUGH!!!!

Clearly this isn't about a dog. My mother has lost absolutely everything in the course of this past year. Her marriage. Her savings. Her job. Her home. Her health has become an issue. Her loss of confidence and control, a crisis. And in the midst of all of this, she's alone. I live in England Clara is finding her own way. My grandfather is dying. Her friends are 'too busy.' JP is a drain.
So what has she got? A dog.

Frankly, I'm feeling a little knocked around right now. Or rather, I'm tired of watching my mother get knocked around. Every piece of news I get from that line is bad news. I think we've been good sports about it. But I've had enough. So God, if you're out there: wake up and put up!

and here you are

Smell is my favorite sense. Smell like nothing else elicits taste, touch, vision, carries me to a particular moment.

I close my eyes and smell a lilac bush and I am 16 again, standing beside Maren and Sarinda, watching Elliot play with Jonathan. Maren, 3 years old, has freckles across her nose and streaks of light in her hair that glisten like the waves of Lake Wononscopomuc on a September morning. She holds a small doll in her left hand—blue eyes, grapefruit lips. Her voice, the voice of a child I have not spoken with in ten years, comes back to me. This smell of lilac floods me with other smells—the grass on the golf course, Maren’s shampoo, a freshly painted door to the chapel.

Maren, 3 years old, is alive in this lilac scent. Alive here in a way she is not otherwise in my memory. Ask me to describe the Maren I knew in 1998, I will, without hesitation, produce a catalog of half-true descriptive phrases, the essence of the girl, but not the girl herself. Yet, here in lilac is Maren, whole.

So it is this morning, as I lay here in bed and a scent—some strange disembodied scent— hits and fills my lungs, fills me with the being of someone faraway. (You.) I lay not thinking in absence, but feeling the presence. Sense builds on sense constructing, out of the abstraction of my memory, a form. Then suddenly: here, here, not there, but here you are beside me...

you can never go home again?

I have a writing deadline that I have to keep to.... two actually. This will be short.

Just got off the phone with my father. Among other things, he told me to stop looking west: 'Accept that the axis of your world has shifted. Accept that your future takes you away from here. Stop looking at England or Europe as places you are passing through. Keep your love for Colombia. Keep your life in New York. Keep those things, but know, know that your life will unfold from there.'

I doubt that I will ever have a particularly stationary life-- after so many travels I have a hard time staying in one place. Yet, I do need a base. When he spoke to me tonight, I had this sickening feeling that my father is right in his assessment.

For the first time, I think I understand what my informants tried to share: a deep sense of mourning not so much for the past, but for the future. Of course, we cannot predict where our futures take us. It isn't the certainty of any possibility (none exists), but the shift in vision, the tectonic movement of the soul, that rattles.

And so, I'm feeling just a little off-kilter at the moment. Just a little. But no time to dwell. Back to writing.

much love

...

Thank you.

for vanessa

Vanessa is demanding that I write her a poem, but since I am not yet willing to share (inflict) that much of myself in the virtual world, I'm going to channel Christina Rossetti. Cheap, I know.

So, my dear friend, a love poem-- out of context-- but appropriate nonetheless.

I wish I could remember the first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me;
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or winter for aught I can say.
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it! Such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow.
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much!
If only I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand! Did one but know!