minus one

egads, in moments when I can see the gifts around me, I think perhaps I wilfully blind myself othertimes because the beauty is almost overwhelming

thank you for all the love of the last few years

    I dunno, I say, weeding through the past, 

    lust? crush? I don't know what to call them

    it's always love, he says
    he? always?

    i never would have guessed. cowboy poetry.

    i curl up, softened by his jagged edges. sublimated.

Why not?

Gentle, rough, brief, lingering, sweet, salty, lovely ... lovely.  How can I feel deprived? I am swimming in love. I am lost in its lushness.  I feel it vibrating all around me.  Not always, but when I open the door it, it's there.  It sneaks in.  Just enough.  It feels like home. 

A facebook update recently: "Zoe is in love."  A couple people inquired who.  No one.  Some congratulated me.  Thanks.  I was in love.  With the gorgeous day, with the warm wind, with the strength of my body and the sensitivity of my skin to be able to feel it, to be in it.  The freedom to walk through it, with it all.  I suppose this can't help but sound cheesy, hippie-y, but the feeling of being wrapped in a wind-brushed fall day and the feeling of being infatuated with a boy are virtually indistinguishable for me.  Rather than enumerate blessings today, I'll close with this from Terry Tempest Williams

I think of my own stream of desires, how cautious I have become with love.  It is a vulnerable enterprise to feel deeply and I may not survive my affections. [...] If I choose not to become attached to nouns - a person, place, or thing - then when I refuse an intimate's love or hoard my spirit [...] my heart cannot be broken because I never risked giving it away. 

But what kind of impoverishment is this to withhold emotion, to restrain our passionate nature in the face of a generous life just to appease our fears? A man or woman whose mind reins in the heart when the body sings desperately for connection can only expect more isolation and greater ecological disease.  Our lack of intimacy with each other is in direct proportion to our lack of intimacy with the land.  We have taken our love inside and abandoned the wild.

I doubt anyone would accuse me of being too open with my affections.  I fear rejection as much as the next freak.  But I'm not settling, and I am inexpressibly thankful for having the verve and self-awareness that that requires.  And I'm not staying still.  And I am going outside.  And I am in love.

Comments

[Miss Bliss]

Lovely, in a toasted walnuts and unexpected rain sort of way.

xoxo