5 things from far away

1. Fluctuating between the perspective that physical distance brings, flickers of normalcy, numbness, sleepiness, and big waves. This is a strange in-between time. I'm letting it be strange.

2. A goal of this season is to make more life I can write about. Writing has been a part of my thinking and learning for decades and this has been a painful, limiting separation. I suspect the rapid growth required by my professional roles would be better integrated and embodied with deep written reflection, for instance. And, I am more than my roles - as a vocational being I sometimes forget this. More life I can write about, more writing across roles, more life that holds the connections between and learnings beyond them. More life I can speak plainly about. More QUIET too. Times of not speaking for hours - or days on a recent silent retreat with longtime moving companions - being in company and not needing to share. This has been satisfying something in me beneath my seemingly endless need to verbally process.

3. Sorting out public transit in a major city can be disorienting for a rural kid like me, but is satisfyingly solve-able. When so much in life is not solve-able or resolve-able, I'm thankful for some puzzles that take me to the intended destination, even if it goes a bit sideways on the way.

4. I could only walk a couple miles at first. Then sleep. The second day, I barely moved. The third, I got to see a dear one far far away from where we became friends. Eat, walk, sleep. Blank stare. Focal length confused. After some days I could walk miles and miles again. Vision still blurry. Some days I cried a lot and some not at all. And the one in me that got confused about the size of my concerns knew I needed to go north, outside the city.

5. Enough people will make me feel right-sized again - countless humans with their own personal struggles going about their own daily business of living & dying. A lack of people will do it too. Of human people anyway. Fox people, deer people, otter and seal people, pelican and starfish and seaweed and rock people. The old giants: tree people, ocean people, earth people, sky people.