The Castle Door

When I was a child, even today, I could wish for a castle door. Open it and on the other side would be a whole new life. Castle doors paved the way to places where everything changed. I could make the world rearrange easily walking through such a door. The problem was that always the person who walked through was always me.

I might try to change who I was much like a child in dress up clothes. Maybe a new dress would make so one would know that I was self-conscious, too smart, too tall, too talkative, not pretty enough. If they did, I’d be a princess and they would forgive me.

Forgive me what?

Forgive me for caring? Forgiving me for feeling small? Forgive me because I wanted to maket things right when they went horribly wrong? Forgive me for wishing I was more than I am?

Forgive me for being human?

I would be a princess inside that castle door, but a princess is human too. That was the problem with castles. The life was new, but reality proved that humanity is anything but new and different.

I learned to love my humanity, looking at the sky with my feet on the ground and my heart open wide. The stars and the angels don’t worry. They don't notice whether I care too much, worry about fixing things, try to be more. They just shine on me. Smile at me. Fill me with love.

I think I’ll leave the castle door to stay out with the stars.

−me strauss Letting me be

Pink M&Ms

Write a Post
Carl cares about curing breast cancer.
I don’t like to be political.
I sent him everywhere to help him realize his goal.
But October is almost over.
How about it? M&Ms anyone?
Won’t you help?

--me strauss Letting me be

When a Good Thing Happens

I felt like maybe I’d reached the end. Maybe the applause had stopped.

Had I finally found that one tremendous failure and didn’t recognize it? Maybe my optimistic spirit was keeping me from seeing, from knowing what everyone already knew, but couldn’t tell me.

It was possible. I might have turned down a lonely road so wrong, so lost in space I had no hope of coming back. How would I know?

Each day I’d remember my mother saying, “You keep putting one foot in front of the other. You reach inside, pick yourself up, and keep on going.” I hadn’t found another option. My heart was telling me it was a matter of time. The universe was not a bad or angry place. Was I delusional?

Every day the glorious sunrise came. It wasn’t for me. The sun set on my resilience. People became my air, my food – they saw a me that I so wanted. The fog of not knowing and wondering whether my believing would be my mistake was the greatest test of all. Iwondered if you could somehow walk off a cliff and not know that you had fallen until you landed.

Then a good thing happened.

That good thing wasn’t my first idea. No, no I’d had so many. It was the first that had the magic. It had the stuff of stars that makes ideas remarkable and real, sparkling with sophisticated simplicity. A spectacular light made a first star so bright it cleared the cosmic dust, so bold it shone in infinite deep feeling color. The soundless vacuum broke into music, sliding like silk all over it.

The universe exhaled relief to find the tension over.

My posture and my disposition lightened. My shoulders softened and my voice got brighter. My thoughts cleared up. My heart slowed down. My fear seemed distant and worthy of study. My calm was here to clear my desk, to organize my head, and to recognize my value as someone.

Despite all logic, I trust that times have changed now. No proof, no medicine is as healing, no sign can turn a lonely road to an adventure as quickly as when a good thing happens.

−me strauss Letting me be

Setting My Feet to Run

When a powerful, wonderful, engaging idea grabs a hold of my mind, my thinking alters. I start seeing colors and possibilities that are "this close" tangible. The conceptual chemisty is magical. Cell upon cell ignites, passing charges across my synapses. I don't see myself. I don't feel time passing. I am inside the idea. I am train of thought speeding to a destination.

Energy dispels any self-consciousness, as my eyes turn inward to visuals of what the idea is, how it works, watching it tick and move. It’s not that different from a mother imagining a baby a few weeks into pregnancy. Yet it's different completely because my imagining becomes true.

When the idea is forming, I share the concept with caution so that folk listening catch a glimpse and understand what they’re seeing. One by one I approach people whose opinion I value, and I use words and metaphors to bring them into my dream. Each of the people I talk to offers a tiny revision, a little tweak. Each tweak makes the idea simpler, more elegant. The concept gets clearer and more intelligent.

My feet feel the feedback of the floor as I move from mind to mind, person to person letting all of them try on the concept. Do they need alternations to make it fit their world view? A few conversational nips and tucks and then, it suits them. It suits me. The process has smoothed out the rough edges. I turn my mind and my hands to crafting the idea in 3-D.

The idea begins to become a product, a service, a something that others can read and make use of. Before I can finish people are askng if they might try it.

Setting my feet to run, praying for the wings at my sides, this idea has it’s own vibrant life.

I’ve always known how get up to fight again when I fail.

What do you do when a dream idea becomes a living reality? What do you do when you succeed fabulously? I think I might have to know these answers soon.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Lady Julia's Birthday Gift

That first time I heard her name, Richard said, “Had you been born in Australia, you would be her.” Her name was Julia, Julia Stanton. It was a name with strength, and honesty, and music, a name an author might give a character. I liked saying it, hearing it, and imagining the person who owned it.

Vincent called it “airing out.” It was a ritual that started when I was commuting from California to Massachusetts – my friends, Margaret and Vincent had taken me in as family in their extra bedroom. Every Sunday we’d take a road trip three hours or so up to Maine, find a restaurant on the oceanfront, and talk the afternoon away. I love them for every detail of every moment of every Sunday to Sunday and in-between them.

It’s true that airing out makes breathing easier during the week.

During those days is when I actually met Julia in person. We met in England where she lives today and shared dinner with Richard. It was 11 years since I’d first heard her name. When we met I saw immediately why Richard had said what he’d said about us. Few would see or say the same thing, but there’s a place where Julia and I are exactly the same.

Margaret and Vincent heard stories about Julia. Julia heard stories about them. That trading of tales went on until Julia came around the time of my birthday, her own just a few weeks away.. For birthdays’ sake, we set out together for an “airing out Sunday,” with Julia.

Before lunch, we stopped at a beautiful spot in Hampton Beach. We all walked along the sidewalk between the sand and the street. While Margaret, Vincent, and Julia talked,

I walked off to put the sand under my sneakers. The feedback was marvelous. As I neared the water I became peaceful, crawling further and further into my eyes. The mansion before the purple sky on the hill is still fixed in my mind and held me still staring at it. I was surrounded on three sides by sky. On three sides there land reaching around me and out to touch the water, keeping the statue of me in safe harbor. As I felt the sea breeze of the ocean breathing, three dear and lifelong friends were behind watching over me.

“Is she okay?” Julia asked.
“Oh yes,” Margaret said.

And I was very much okay. I was in the center of creation. On my way to the three I stopped to pick up to granite stones. One was large one was smaller, I took them to Julia.

“Happy Birthday to both of us, Julia. I’d like you to have this little stone to remember this day by. I promise I’ll keep mine until you tell me you no longer have yours.”

Julia Stanton got married this summer in a castle to a wonderful man I think who loves her. He’s wonderful and they are wonderful together. I call her the Lady Julia and him Lord David. I can imagine her coming down castle stairs to him. She and he both deserve such a lovely dream come true.

I’m holding that granite stone now eight years later. I’ll keep it until she tells me she doesn’t have hers.

−me strauss Letting me be

Sitting on Rock Fences

Sitting on fences will make you pain in the ass. . . . Alan Parsons Project, Try Anything Once.

Around the corner from where I live are many historical houses. Most of them are single family dwellings. At the end near my building is a prestigious day school, it has a wrought iron fence along the sidewalk. That seems to make it fit in with the houses.

The people in the beautiful houses live behind fences that are tall and black. The fences are iron bars that reach up to make spikes at the top – no sitting on the fence where those people live – at their houses you are in or you’re out.

Folks can see inside the fences, but no one can reach into habitats. A well-cared for Japanese garden with a small bridge graces a lawn. English gardens and porches decorate yards and houses. But the people don’t come out to see them. The people must be very busy or hiding like zoo animals do.

The wrought iron fence at the school is less. The ground was raised and has a concrete wall surround. I sit on the wall in daylight, watching people on the sidewalk. I find my way there in the dark of night to stare through the trees up at the sky. Sitting on that fence wall, I become part of the scenery. I become a private observer. Fence sitting there is invisible.

I’m uncut stone fence sitter by nature. Uncut stone walls have personality and like to play. Uncut stones won’t put up with folks who “sit on the fence” about being there. Rocks of all shapes and sizes that don't interlock require I find a place that fits and that I commit to it. Even when I’m still and settled, such a fence is prone to move a bit, rocking, tipping, swaying, sometimes sliding me right to the ground.

I make friends with a rock fence, but eventually it gets uncomfortable. I have to make friends with it again and again. Rock fences aren’t fair or predictable. They can't be ruled. They can't be tamed. They are what they are and that’s it. It takes experience and adaptability to sit on a rock fence with complete commitment, knowing that I’m never safe and I’m neversure that the fence won’t shift.

Sitting on a rock fence reminds me of living my life.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Waiting Moon

It was easy for me to make friends with the moon. My father hung it there just for me. The moon doesn’t race through the sky, like the sun keeping just ahead of me. It waits for me.

When my mind is a puzzle or overburdened, the moon is there in black, black night waiting while I watch, trying to sort my thoughts, trying to find my feelings. It waits for me, waits for me. The moon waits while I watch.

I like to walk at night in the safety of stars and angels watching over me. On a road that I know by my favorite trees, I feel peace and comforting silence of deepest, dark blue. That peace, that peace is inside of me. It’s not part of the silence I hear. Would that it were, but it's not.

I know because when my mind is a puzzle or overburdened, the silence fills up with thoughts, with feelings that shadow me, trying to swallow and haunt me. While I walk in the dark, the moon waits.

I look to the sky for the stars and the angels to watch over me, but I don’t remember. I can’t recall how to believe. I just keep walking the road until I see the moon shining down. The moon waits for me, waits for me. It waits until I find it.

On the edge of the moonlight I'm wrapped in a blanket of black, black night. I watch the moon waiting as I sort my thoughts, trying to find my feelings. I sit watching the moon until I can see. It can take hours.

The moon always waits for me.

−me strauss Letting me be

25 Words: Strong Enough

As sure as the sun sets, we want to hold on to what we love.

The trick is to hold strong enough to be gentle.

−me strauss Letting me be

Learning to Paint Under a Blue Sky

I once ran in the green field of time. It was grass green under blue sky. It was an oak tree that was mine. I had thoughts then, more than a child. They weren’t filled worries, problems, stresses, no long road of miles and miles . . . .

In those times, thoughts didn’t dare bother me I was meant to make sure the sun shines I was keeper of the stories and mysteries. Sweet dreams sought me out every night. I would dream of places that I might be, places I might find peaceful gardens where flower grow taller than I do and animals are not afraid of a small child.

But the inches came taller, taller. I was a child bigger than the tales I dreamed. So slowly the simple thoughts faded and I stayed inside, working, working. never running on green grass even in my mind. Oh how seriously I became. Oh how steady my feet stayed. Oh how I would walk in places that I had run, gardens that once were peaceful became escape from my mind which grew fuller and fuller with nagging worries and details, more details than I knew could assault what should be a relaxing time.

How to get back to what I had known before was the question? How do I do that before I forget that I knew it at all?

I learned to paint today. I’m not a painter. That wasn’t the choice or the reason. I splatter paint in real Jackson Pollack style. It was a memory not a work of art I needed then.

I needed to find that little girl who ran in the green field of time under a blue sky out to the oak tree that was all mine.

She was waiting. Just as I hoped and I knew she would be.

−me strauss Letting me be

Pictures in Time

Do you take photographs of the runners? she asked.

Oh yes! Well, no. What do I say?

I owned a camera once, no twice. What I found both times was that when I went to take a photograph, the camera always got in the way somehow.

I think in pictures, talk in pictures. I hear the word photograph, and photographs are all I can see. Finished images argue like children talking, tugging at my sleeve, trying to tell their after-school stories. Details steal my attention so completely, drawing me, pulling me, taking my breath so much so that thoughts of other realities leave my hands to be set aside. The camera is an afterthought left behind with the rest of my life.

I can’t escape the art I see in the ordinary. It fascinates me. I become all curiosity.

Do you see that pencil on that sheet of paper? It sits at an angle across some words. Just above it and off-center, the handwritten word triage is circled, and to the left are the words inside me. One inch further left sits a cell phone, closing a triangle that goes from pen to words to phone. A story begins about a telephone call that never came.

I don’t take photographs. I have no camera.

I hold beautiful images in my mind.

I share them with you when I tell their stories.

I am a writer.

My photographs are word pictures set in time.

−me strauss Letting me be

A Song of Love in Black and White

When the writer returns − a writer ready to play − the air tranforms.

A simple exchange of vibrations melds, when the writer begins tuning and trying the instrument.

Minds of readers note the feeling.

They fill with anticipation, and in a word connection occurs.

It’s spontaneous. It’s breathtaking.
It’s relationship. It’s exhilaration.

Music breaks through every word ... thought, felt, heard.

It’s a joy. It’s a wonder. It’s marvelous intellection, individualization. It’s introspection. It’s ideation. The input, the inquiry . . . the invitation to take a peek into imagination is delicious, delightful, enchanting, alluring.

The dancing that happens inside the words reminds us that love can be sparked and stirred with a turn of phrase or a well-chosen word.

Who hasn’t fallen in love with a word?
What sort of heart separates so completely?

Yet the writer is playing simplicity, crafting communication,
displaying a message meaningful and packed with years of praying, talking, translating,
and deep, deep thinking.

The colors, the colors, the music you hear. The writer only put there as a gift
as a favor, a flavor of gratitude
that you might take the moment to hear,
really hear what the words are saying.

It’s the prodigal writer and the prodigal audience. It’s a circle of music, a fugue on a flat white computer screen. Like a circle, the writer will always be back again.

It’s why God made writers and why he put music inside the words.
It’s departure. It’s homecoming. It’s a violin. It’s a song of life. It’s a song of being.

It’s love in black and white, and colors never seen.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Power of a Great Idea

Ideas. How many does one person have in one day? Surely we have more than there are stars, more than there are grains of sand. Each thought, each response brings a new possibility − an idea − to our heads, some of them actually get to our hands. We think of ideas as creativity and the actions they bring innovations.

Not all ideas are so special. Some are downright bland and boring. Some are self-indulgent plans for glory. Some are wishes without substance. Some are dreams we won’t invest in.

Ideas can be impractical, improper, or impossibly beyond imagination’s dreamy land. Ideas can be great, grand, and goofy − well worth pursuing, playing with to find where they take us and who with.

Every long time an idea happens, when a piece of this collides with a bit of that. Suddenly, what you have is a great idea. It’s not great because you had it. It’s great because you recognize it. You realize that it’s something you, your friends, and people you don’t know have needed it for a so very long.

That’s when you have to take the idea out of your head and put it in your hands to build on it. Then it’s time to set your feet to run.

− me strauss Letting me be

Change

I remember how I once felt about change. I couldn’t find enough ways. Change meant new beginnings, new days, new chances to grow and be more. Change meant living, being alive.

Change was a friend of mine, a pal and a confidant. It was natural, like curiosity. Change made sunny days unendingly interesting and starlit nights constantly new.

Change is a way of life. It’s a way of staying alive. It’s not just adapting. It’s reaching and grasping, and wandering through moments, each newly-made gemstone, a wild sighting of a dancing star being born, being made from the chaos around me. Change could pull me forward and hold me on a path that I did not need to see. It was direction. It was destiny. It was my goal and form. Change was not an idea. Change was part of me. Change was real, like bricks and mortar.

Then I heard myself say, “Sometimes a rut is a comfortable place to be.” I heard how easily I said those words and thought, Is it true? Is that what I believe? My answer was Yes I think so.

Change makes me weary and takes my feet off the ground. I’m finding the ground is a fine place to stand. People talk to me much more easily, when I’m not constantly moving around, when I'm not changing identities.

I never thought I might say that change is something I’d rather not take a part in.

These days new beginnings don’t seem new to me. They all look like ones that I’ve already gone after. Each new beginning means leaving investment behind, starting over again.

Beginnings are incredibly trying, trying to fit, trying to see, trying to show, trying to find a place while not taking up someone else’s spot, trying to say who I am, and reveal what is what.

I remember how I once felt about change. Now I can’t find many ways that it feels right. Am I afraid? Change means saying good-bye. Change means wondering if I will be lost in the shuffle again.

I thought Change was my friend, but it was more my chalkboard − something to entertain me, to keep me from being bored − a tool to figure who I am, who I want to be. Now I know, and I don't need to draw anymore.

I’ve changed how I think about change.

I don't want every new beginning to be the start of an ending.

−me strauss Letting me be

Threads

People are the threads. We weave in and out of each other’s paths. Some follow the warp; some follow the weft. We get tangled in each other’s stories each other’s lives. We unravel our own undeserved dreams, trying to be something we believe we weren’t meant to attempt.

Yet we aspire. We spool our way out, unwinding, stretching to be, to become. We are connecting, intertwining into a picture, a line in a song, a stitch − no matter how frayed and repaired, we must be some part of some thing. We want to be anything except disconnected, hanging down, loose and lost. No, not lost, please − we’re afraid that one tug would break us, pull us free. We would lose our hold. We would be ungrounded with nothing to cling to − in the dark with no light to take us home.

Thread is wrapped strongly. It’s hard to break. When the warp and the weft are woven well, then the fabric won’t tear or unravel. It’s strong enough to wear its way through life. Threads weave our stories just right. Each is part, a memory of another’s picture.

All of the threads, all of the colors of life − what a rainbow we weave, giving each other strength like the warp and weft, like a sunrise filling a sky, like a flower decorating a fence.

Every thread in a piece needs the others.

People are threads in the tapestry of life.

−me strauss Letting me be

Particularly Glad

He always thought that only mountains could be beautiful. I heard him proclaim it. Yes, proclaim is exactly what he did when he spoke of them. He found his own thoughts worthy of public decree. He’d announce that flat lands had their use, but then ask what possible beauty could a man proud as he ever find in a place with flat air?

No matter the metaphor I couldn’t convey the lovely feeling and the wide open space of the grassland without trees only blue skies above it. The green is so green and blue so blue, that the clouds must show off for fear of being thought to be boring.

So today as I lay back in the grass that is wide as the world, I watch the cloud ballet and think of the adventures, of the characters we might have invented had we lived here when we were children.

I laze on the grass, enjoying, breathing in every minute. I drink the gratitude for a world that is like this. I’m particularly glad I had the good sense to quit dating that proclaiming brat before college was over.

−me strauss Letting me be

If You Love . . .

If you love, you know you’re going to feel the hurt,
See the flowers grow from the muddy earth. Howard Jones.

“Hug me like you mean it,” she said, and my eyes said that I could not. The hurt was too large, too fresh. The confusion had bruised my heart. My arms wouldn’t do what they should. She knew it. I knew it. Once we could. Once we were close. Now we stood totally separate.

The word friend hung like a smoky mist, taunting the two of us. Our faces showed we knew more. Words weren’t going to do it. Neither she nor I wanted it to end that way − then or now. Neither she nor I could change the mistakes we made that piled in small silences on each other until our laughter, our memories were in jeopardy if we tried to hold what was once still.

Only love can cause a problem so large, so deeply felt. Only love unconditional can forgive the hurt, so the healing can start. Only love made my arms loose up for that hug while my heart wished for a different end to the story. But that hug made my heart bigger, softer,, and stronger for the love of it. I hugged to let her know how I valued what we had both lost.

If you love, you know that the flowers need dirt, and that sad things can make a large heart larger and able to love even more.

−me strauss Letting me be

One, None, Either, Both, or Another

Sitting on a concrete wall across the street, I eat lunch and watch clouds in blue, blue sky on the side of mirrored building. It’s a moving picture in living color, a silent movie that nature and man unwittingly conspired to make. This particular plot would never turn out exactly the same, nor would the audience come together in the same way. As I look around, I think that might be a good thing for all of us.

Lost in my thoughts of clouds and my cloud of thoughts, I wonder what Joni Mitchell, who saw both sides, would say right now. I feel like Alice, on the wrong side of the looking glass. Each square offers a glimpse I can see, but not experience. Still I’m here, aren’t I?

I put my lunch in the bin and move to place on small patch of city grass under a small city tree. People walk between my glorious view and me. I don’t really mind. The movie has become a stage play, and they’re characters meant to add context and color. My, how they do.

They don’t notice me, noticing them. Except for one.

A man with shining eyes and dark hair sits in the grass a few feet from me. He readies his camera. His mind is working, seeing, playing with ideas.

I ask, “Do you think we’re more like the reflection or more like the clouds?”

He smiles and says, “We get to pick − one, none, either, both, or another − don’t we?”

I knew that he and I would be friends for life.

I picked every answer. So did he.

−me strauss Letting me be

Take My Trust

Here I am. I am writing while the sun’s still sleeping. I have a promise I must keep, a hope I can’t shake loose. One word’s been following me. It’s been around for days, stalking my thoughts.

I told myself I would write it.

I hear the muffled sounds of invisible cars, passing by in the darkness outside, Look-alike people drive look-alike machines that they sit inside. I sit alone, recalling empty words covering fearful or worse, nonexistent, feelings.

Listening to the genuinely empty sounds around me, I hear the echoes of unanswered calls, of friends who let friends down, of dates and meetings forgotten, of promises made without care.

I think, wandering my cares and fears, wondering if this is how others think of theirs. I'm trying to sort out the whys, hoping to find some sort of reason. I realize the risk and still the question remains to haunt me.

Where did the trust go?

Every voice around me seems bundled, tied, and locked inside a safety box. Each safety box is wrapped to look as if it’s not, as if it's invisible. The fear, the hiding is so sad. It hurts. It’s not right. It’s not good. Trust or fear weaves through every act. It filters their words, coloring the meanings. Words have wide eyes that look with yearning, spaces between them stare with hope. They beg, Can you see me? Can I trust you? Do you trust me? Will we trust each other?

Everywhere I go I see it. Trust is whispering its name. It interrupts our conversations. You said trust yesterday. Two more said it this week.

Where did the trust go? We had it. We shared it freely, boldly without fear, without secrets. Were we really that brave? Were we that naïve?

We were trustworthy.

We are trustworthy still. We can trust that we know just as we did then.

Take my trust. Take all you need.

I have plenty because without it, I can’t breathe.

−me strauss Letting me be

Two Tin Cans

Two tin cans and a string used to be magical. Still I look and I think, maybe they still are. With two cans and a string I have to listen or speak.

We must dance through our conversation. I lead. You follow. I follow. You lead. It ends up a rhythm of give and receive.

Two cans and a string carrying thoughts and laughter.

Two cans and a string turned the corner of my house. We couldn't be more than six feet apart, yet we couldn't see each other. We said we were communicating in outer space. We said we were exploring stars and alien places. I remember feeling like I was listening to you from inside your head. It seemed I could hear your thoughts, each one as it formed. It markedf a special friendship.

Two cans and a string made communication more personal that any cell phone.

It was better than whispering secrets.

−me strauss Letting me be

I Remember

It was a yawning, a yearning that had settled dearly, deeply in the quiet side of wondering, that played a softer, sadder melody that I couldn’t sleep away. The minor chords were haunting in their paradoxical dark droning. The unsettling symphony was light and dark, night and day.

Was I too much? Was I too little? Did I give up or give myself too freely? Would I never find the parts I need, never to be back where I should be? Would I be wandering, hopelessly dancing through hallways that shouldn’t be in the dreams that I couldn’t dream away?

Holding to my heart, I couldn’t help but fight. So with a soldier’s soul I surrendered and stood my ground. I won the world and wandered it. I heard heaven and touched wood smooth as stone. Once the sunset spread a path of light across the water for me to walk upon. When I stepped out I was golden, truly blessed. Then it was gone. I was lost again.

I couldn’t hold my own hand.

Then a friend said something that made sense, that defined me.

Suddenly, I remember what I forgot.

God is in his heaven and angels really are everywhere.

I am here.

Angels really are everywhere.

−me strauss Letting me be

A Sunrise Coming

I'm at my keyboard. Music is playing. The sun has been down for hours. I am up hours longer than I should be. That reality touches deeply. It brings out words.

It is the magical land where life is perfect and so is the world. Silence, sweet silence, like new fallen snow softens the blows the day has dealt me. Little things fall and evaporate, turning smoky without no sign of flames.

The heartbeat of the world, like my own, slows. Flowers are sleeping. Roads are open. The lake is black with stillness, reflecting only the moon's coolness and a faint mist. The stars are out and watching over, with the angels, seeing to my keeping.

I know I cannot move a rock or build a building in the darkness. I can rest, unafraid that I am leaving something untended, uncared for, needing to be done. I am free.

I feel deeper, fuller, broader, as if I might be out there with the stars – my cosmic others. It's us. I can see, feel their presence, feel my thoughts beside them, my heart among them. Their soft light is a comfort as I shed the hard light day hung over me.

Night is the dark goodness. I walk slower, but angels guide me.

Night is the quiet of my own thoughts. I sleep and write in the womb of a day not born. I wait with it, hoping for my next chance to make a difference, make a change, make a life that has meaning, as my words do, meaning that reaches into my heart and out to others

Night writing is exploring, knowing, believing the possibilities that are a sunrise coming.

−me strauss Letting me be

Asking for Help

I suppose asking for help doesn’t come easily for anyone. Surely that must true. We all must think of ourselves as able to find our way on our own, helping others . . . not the ones needing help.

Need seems to place us lower than we might want to be. It takes us back to that dependency where we were, reaching up with a hand, reaching for someone stronger, smarter, more powerful, more adept than we are.

That’s the thought, the learning that I’m unraveling now. It doesn’t have to feel that way.

Reaching out for help doesn’t mean reaching up for strength.

Am I strong enough in my sense of self to believe that?
Can I ask for help and feel I’m not becoming dependent?

Of course I can. I can stand by your side and lean on you, knowing you’ll lean on me when you feel the same need.

You and I do that without thinking.

Asking for help is faith and trust. It’s something to live up to both ways. It makes us stronger, gentler, gives us grace.

I am learning how to become a human being. It takes help.

All I had to do was ask.

−me strauss Letting me be

Believing Instead of Wishing

I was in an elevator in the UK, on my way to a meeting. A young lady who was chatting with me as we went to the conference room said, “You travel internationally. Oh that must be so glamorous.”

I smiled to myself, thinking I was her once. How do I tell her that it’s not without taking something from her?

Sometimes the words come out the way they should.

“Glamour is only glamour from far away. Up close it looks like life with all its warts. Even movie stars have bad days.”

She was a smart one, that young lady. She stopped and gave a thought. Then I saw her eyes smiling widely. “Yes, and I suppose that it’s ok for it to be that way. We look at them and they look at us – just as the king wishes he could be a person. I guess we need to know which one we want. It’s decisions that count not wishes.”

She was only twenty-five. I was older by a lot. By the time the elevator stopped she had become quite glamorous to me.

Glamour is about belief.

If I believe my dream, my wishes will become decisions.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Edge of the Sea

It didn’t take long to get there, to the water’s edge. Truth is I was there before I grabbed my keys to go. I was a state of mind that I needed to find the visual for. That's why I left the safety of my small space to wander out. Still as soon as I put my jacket on, stuck my wallet in my jeans, and reached for my cell phone, I was already gone.

Time in a car means nothing when you’re on your own, if where you’re going is where you need to be. I let the music, some complicated fugue, play me along. I let the blue sky keep watch over my way. My thoughts kept the picture of space and held my purpose firmly, unwaveringly ahead, just ahead of me. I was the child on a date with her life. No thoughts needed thinking. Not really, no pains. Only the call of the edge of the sea.

Perfect afternoon caught me up breathless. It was almost more than I could bear. How the world is filled with metaphors, murals, moving meaning of my life. There, I thought, there. See that calm iridescent, ice blue of my son’s baby eyes on the sand of his young man’s hair. See the confusion of water that runs up the side.

And I walk between both -- the beautiful calm sand and the chaos of the sea -- I walk through my life on the edge between calm and confusion, under a blue and ever changing sky.

Seeing nature’s contradiction makes it easier to bear the same edge that churns up inside.

I love the space under the sky that gives perspective to the crashing, where the calm ice blue meets the confusion at the edge of the sea.

−me strauss Letting me be

One Mind, One Thought

I remember too well the days of spinning plates and juggling balls. I used to live for them. I did, didn’t I?

They were my life, but that wasn’t living. Balls, and plates, and benchmarks don’t make for thinking deep thoughts. They’re not conducive to meaningful conversation. They’re really not about people.

What was that life about? Running, rushing, reaching, being fearful? I never liked scary movies or scary rides at carnivals. Why would I choose the life of an adrenaline junkie living on the edge of the impossible, always this pulling a slightly scorched success from the fires of certain failure?

I felt used and useful, but the moments in between were spent wandering and anxious. I had no place without those plates, and balls, and benchmarks. I had to look for thoughts to fill up the deep dark spaces.

I am one. I am best thinking one thought, doing one thing well. Even spinning plates and juggling balls, I could spin only one plate, and then the next. I can only take one step, and then another.

I listen to one song playing beautifully in my mind. I have only one life.

No more changing channels to see what might be playing else where. No more need to make sure every ball is in the air and every plate is spinning. The one job well done, the one thought well considered feels natural and stays with me. It is my one lasting comfort. I think I’ve found my way out of the switching yard.
It’s a luxury to understand the peaceful side of a one track mind.

−me strauss Letting me be

25 Words: A Pattern

25 words
It's a pattern weaving through all of my life.
I am kinder, more generous, and I like myself better when I am helping someone else.

Finding a Friend

She is a self-proclaimed, literal person. What you see is what you get and to her things need proportions that work well together. She’d spent enough time with me in the 3-D world that I was a person she cared about. I had form that was real and fully filled out.

When she came to visit the virtual version, she said that I wasn’t me.

Not me? You're kidding?

But for her it was true.

It couldn’t be real for her. She said I didn’t talk like this when we sat on her back porch on Saturday evenings drinking wine or when we shared so many Sunday afternoons at restaurant tables discussing the world, creativity, and books.

She had me there.

But . . .

Is that me more me than this me or this me more me than that? Of course not.

But . . .

We find our friends in the sweet psychic place where we meet, by the safe, silent spot where we can be who we are. We long for that, need that, and get to know them and ourselves by and through that place where we meet, that place where we are.

When that goes away, our world is twisted and shaken until we can explain where it went − even then, the loss of that safe, sweet, silent spot remains an absence, an open place we feel. It's something missing that never gets filled unless that very friend finds us again.

Because to express who we are is a gift and a mystery that needs a friend and a a safe, silent spot to find each other in. Our friends hold us, and hold us up, and hold our hands in their hearts without thinking, judging, or looking too closely. It's doing the math without acting mathematically.

She didn't find the safe, silent sharing spot with my virtual me that conversation has built into our lifelong three-dimensional friendship.

But . . .

Every word that I share is an expression of who I am.

All of my words are me −inside and out of our lovely safe silent spot.

Every friend I have sees a different lovely safe, silent spot.

Perhaps we are meant to find a friend for all of the words we need to share.

−me strauss Letting me be

Today's Dance

I shall not write today about my feelings. Today I’ll take some room to breathe. I’ll do my work and pay attention to the things that need my brain. I shall not worry over matters that cannot be fixed or cannot change. I’ll use my energy instead to help the folks I know do what needs getting done.

Today I’ll read. I’ll visit old friends. I’ll be a person, just the same. I'll let myself, be me.

I shall not write about my feelings.

But when no one’s looking, . . . I might dance alone, just for me.

−me strauss Letting me be

About Living, Being Alive

When courage finally comes, you never see it coming,
Right outta nowhere
You open your heart and that changes everything
You’re going somewhere
And all you need to know is that you’re free to go.
– Christine Kane, Right Outta Nowherre

I knew that the day would come.

I would look in the mirror.

I would see that I was looking back. I would know I’d found my way past the noise of what loud voices told me.
I would hear myself telling me I had been wrong. I would see in my own eyes the wisdom of what life had shown me. I would understand, and stand on my own feet with solid ground beneath me.

Even though, I didn’t know where this day or the next was going to take me, one bit more than I had known what my route would be the day before when I had stood looking in the same mirror, I no longer wondered who would be going down that road.

Right outta nowhere, I was there, brave and vulnerable, tall and alive, funny, and not afraid of me.

Even when the usual bravery isn’t the same the courage it takes to face the sunshine knowing that . . . life isn’t about proving something, or holding on, or listening to people who don’t you.

It’s about understanding that . . .

Some choices hold you down.
Some chances set you free. . . .
−Christine Kane

It’s about believing in everything I was born for.
It’s about living, being alive, in the world that has my name.

−me strauss Letting me be

About that Deserted Island

I can’t imagine a person who hasn’t be asked the ice-breaking question that begins with If you were on a Deserted Island . . . The sentence has a variety of endings what book, what CD, what three things . . . would you bring?

I wasn’t really thinking about that question. I was thinking about writing and ended up there.

My questions was Would I write if no one was listening?

I would write. I would for the same reason people sing in the shower, run by the lake shore, or paint a portrait. I would write for the same reason that people grow flowers in places that other people can’t see. I would write because I know it’s wrong leave your talent dormant, lying wanting, hidden in some empty closet, only used when other folks applaud. I would write to find the pathway through my thoughts that leads to me.

About that desert island, might I have paper and pencil, please?

Even if I might not have them, I would write an oral history.

−me strauss Letting me be

Seven Wishes for Hans

“Let’s make a wish! What would I wish for/from the blogosphere.” he said.

Because he was Hans, who wore my scarf into battle, I promised I would.

Wishes don’t come hard for me, especially wishes for knights and heroes. So I wrote these seven as he asked, and I send them to Hans special delivery.

1. I wish the writing bloggers do would teach us to look at our thoughts, to hear what we’re thinking, to see that we worry about the same things, that we want our children to grow old and be happy.

2. I wish we’d remember that behind each word is a person, who wrote it, who thought it, who once was a child.

3. I wish we’d be aware that every word we write is here for our descendents to read, that they will see as strangers from earlier times, as people they only know from what they read.
4. I wish I had time to write a word every day to every person I’ve met and I will meet, to ask about their lives, their thoughts, their histories, and their dreams. I’ve met so many beautiful minds. I want to spend time with all of them.

5. I wish the people who didn’t blog could experience the weird synchronicity and serendipity that keeps occurring reoccurring as thoughts interconnect, friendships form, and genuine feelings are shared. I would miss the openness of our minds if I left.

6. I wish the Internet business model would show it's face to allow everyone who need work to put their skills to use in constructive ways. Imagine the world that would make. Imagine the innovations, the things we might build.

7. I wish we would breathe, that we'd look at the sky and remember the world turns without us. Then we'd see that we all worry about the same things, that we all want our children to grow old and be happy.

Big wishes all of them, Hans. You deserve no less.

Wishes do come true . . . some just take longer.

−me strauss Letting me be

Everlasting Communication

This week Melly told the story of the brilliant experience of meeting a blogger friend in person for the very first time.

I’ve enjoyed that pleasure three times now. Each time it’s been like meeting someone I’ve known for years. Each time it felt like walking into a conversation that had already started with someone I already knew three-dimensionally, a longtime friend that I just happened to have never met, until then.

I’ve been thinking about that, about why that is, about where that difference begins.

Studies say that well over 50% of our communication is nonverbal – how the message is presented, body language. When communicating over the telephone, one researcher found that 84% of communication is vocal and 16% is verbal.

It makes me wonder how that all changes when we put our thoughts directly on screen or on paper. The route bypasses the need for visual and audio support, because we think through the words we write and put down, and we see the words that we read and pick up.

Something about this virtual world calls out to our thoughts, demanding our undivided attention – demanding we participate in the moment in a way that we can’t, don’t, won’t in the busy, noisy, over-stimulating world that we live in.

Maybe it’s that the smallest communication we write here is everlasting.

What if I spoke to those I love with that sort of presence? What if every word I said was everlasting communication?

−me strauss Letting me be