leap year

there are stars tonight.
it has been a while.
we have had rain, ice snow, more rain, sleet, clouds, snow, ice, clouds and rain.
today there was sun and now there are stars.
the sun and the stars make it easier to be happy.

they say that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.

that does not sound so good when you say February. but with global warming - you just don't know anymore and perhaps February it is.

thank you

you showed me what it is to be happy.
somehow i had lost it. i existed in a world of sadness. i did not laugh. i did not feel joy. i was so self absorbed, all i could see were my own problems. completely immersed in my own unhappiness.
to rediscover laughter and love for life, to realize how i was and decide to change, to have you there encouraging me to change.
i thank you for this.
whatever we are now (because i am not sure and really i just ignore the question everytime i see you) you gave this to me and it is what i needed in my life.
i love you. i always will. you have affected me in ways that no one else ever has. whatever there is between us, there is the laughter and the joy and these are the things that make life bearable. i look for them in other people and i find them. laughter brings meaning into my life.
sharing in the joy of being with others; this brings so much happiness and purpose to everything i do and you showed it to me, you gave it to me freely when i was too blind to see how it would change my life.
so thank you.
maybe you read this, maybe you know all these things that i share.
perhaps this thank you will go unnoticed.
either way, i am telling the world that you - one small person - changed me and i am but one small person.
but it matters - it really does.
you have set me free.

what was i thinking?

sometimes i look back on the three years of my life that were spent living in a dirt house and i wonder what went wrong. how did that happen?
do you have things like that in your life? things you believe in. you think you can do it and your whole life is absorbed by it and then it just fizzles.
a lot to learn from it i know, but i can not see it yet.
the only thing i can see about it right now is that there is nothing you can do to ignore who you really are and what you really need in life. nothing at all. try to lie to yourself about what you want and unhappiness fills every nook and cranny.
i knew right from the start that it was not my path, it was a beautiful idea but not my life work. building houses out of the earth, living away from people out in the country. . . not my passion.
i managed to know what i don't want and there must be something to that.

sometimes music makes me weep

i love music. it is a huge part of my life. i spent many years training to be a professional musician and my heart was broken by the reality of what that life would mean for me. i decided that i could not emotionally withstand the life of a classical musician.
the intensity. traveling, competition, isolation.
my friend steve called me up one day and told me he had gotten a job and i started to go on about how great it was. . . he said it was in Tokyo and he didn't think he was going to take it.
Tokyo is a long way away.
the choice to let it slip away was hard - letting go of dreams, well that is never easy. i don't think about it often but sometimes i will remember and it makes me weep. sometimes i hear a piece i played or something that reminds me of that part of my life and i just cry and cry.

i still love music. all kinds of music. i am always looking for something new. lately I have been spending a lot of time at Daytrotter - and tonight i found something i feel like sharing. they are playing in bloomington on March 31.

What are you afraid of?

That's what it is all about. We manage the fear.
Courage is acting in the face of fear. Life is full of courageous acts. For some people, going out the door in the morning takes courage. Some people never make it out their door.
Death, food poisoning, spiders, failure, goats, what other people think of me, loneliness, deep water - all these things affect me. They are fears that shape my day.
I don't encounter goats too often, but when I do it is pretty tough to stand my ground. I avoid deep water - so that one is not too terrible.
I have to eat, so I think about the food poisoning thing every day.
Spiders - they are tiny so they can be anywhere. I overcome that fear through knowing what the scary ones look like. My apologies to spiders everywhere as any that are unidentifiable or borderline super scary die if I can't avoid them or if I think they might reproduce in my home.
Death, failure, loneliness - do we all fear these things?
Some people claim they have no fear of death - but is it just courage? Is it that they act in the face of death even though it is deeply terrifying? I sure think so - nothing revelatory about that though.
I guess it is interesting to see fear affect my life. When someone is afraid to love, or afraid to try, or afraid to eat out. . . . It is interesting to see fear shape my life.

I find myself wondering it about strangers on the street or new acquaintances - what are you afraid of.