Looking at the Abstract

When I started out,
I didn't know who or what.
Colors were colors.
Black was black. White was white.
It took a while to see.

Everything that I saw
was just what was.
Any meaning was
only what I layered on.

It's a versatile, flexible,
humbling thought and feeling.

We all create reality.

I saw things one way.
I turned them 90, 180, 270 degrees.
I filled in the blanks
with mirror images.
Why is the positive space
where I focus first?
Why do I go to the negative space
when I look for answers?

Positives hold promises.
Promises are hard to believe.

Am I looking at the abstract
or am I looking at me?
--me liz strauss Letting me be

See the Stars

If I made a promise to take you to Hollywood, would you want me to take you over to see the walk of stars? Plenty of people go there.

We watched the famous folks get their names put in the sidewalk while flashbulbs went off.

Black and white pictures and movies reels made those moments history.

Now you can step from one to another. It's alot like walking on stones across a foreign pond of water, filled with snakes and alligators. It's the kind of pond we used to imagine when we were little kids just playing.

Something circular seems to be working there. They were playing too, weren't they?

The people called them stars -- those folks whose names are in the sidewalk. I never saw one of them shining, not really. They all seemed to be people just like me.

When I want to see something that's worth traveling across country to experience. All I have to do is go outside and look up.

I can the see the stars.

They're shining, twinkling, and if they're playing, they're doing it far more spectacularly than I've done so far.

See the stars.

--me strauss Letting me be --Liz Strauss

One of a Kind, Unique, Individual

I'm not a knight or a warrior. I can't fight someone else's fight. Every time I do. I end up wrong. I can't wear their clothes. They don't fit. I look silly. I can't walk in their shoes. When I try I fall down.

I need to sing my own song.

It's not a selfish thing. It's a surrender to understanding how to be who I am.

It took me a while to figure out that I can toss and turn, stretch and skew an idea, but I can change the way my brain works. I can walk all the way around and through a thought or a belief, but I can't change the chemistry or the electricity of a single synapse -- slow them down maybe -- but not reroute and remap the system to work as someone's else might.

When the conversation branches off, I have to pay attention to stay on track.

It's a beauty and a curse.

I'm one of kind, unique, individual -- just like everyone else.

--me strauss Letting me be

Future Fire

Bending, shaping, life is changing. Even sunrise is making the world look as if it's an alien place. I dance with direction. A wind steals my attention and tries to turn me another way.

Sorry, can't go.

It used to be . . . when we played Follow the Leader, I would let the other kids decide which way to go. Pick any destination I could get there. It wasn't the location. It was the way there. Great friends and great ideas were down every path, up every road. It was showing folks their way home.

I kind of missed them when it was over.

Now other kids who got where they were going on their own and have found they're a little bit lost, anyway. They want to play Follow the Leader like the olden days.

Except now, the sky in my future is on fire. This time we're going to have go where I decide.

And that wind is just gonna to have to blow.

--me strauss Letting me be