Right here in this place

We all have a place to put those bad events. Don't we? We keep them somewhere -- here, right here in this place.

We lock them in a backroom, a closet, a castle, a basement, somewhere we won't have to look. Still they are near, right here in this place. We don't look. We look away. That is the place where we put things we fear.

Hope is good. We hope.

We hope, if we do . . . if we do, that we won't know feelings that might have hurt us some then ago.

We put them in this place, right here in this place. It's like erasing them,. No, not erasing them. It's like banishing, vanishing, making them disappear from a faint-hearted view. Too big, they are. Too powerful for the small one we are here. We are small right here in this place.

Like potatoes, they lie in the dark, dampness waiting to make them uglier, swell them with stuff that wasn't what was ever there. Suddenly if we visit them, they are bigger than, bigger then.

We are bigger too. Yet that doesn't come to us. We shrink instead at the thought of revisiting the cellar, the dungeon, the cupbard where we left our fear from our view.

Oh, oh, what if we stopped at a mirror and looked in? Say we say that we're more now than we were then, right there then. Standing taller we could think on our smaller self and say, "Not to worry, not to shrink back. I'm here, I'll steer that ugly thing away from us, all swelled up I'll make sure it cannot touch you or me. It will not do what it did once a long time ago."

Opening the windows, the doorways, we let the light in.

We hope. Hope is good.

We hold our breath, let in the light, and walk to the place where we hid what we most feared.

Oh, oh, the light has banished it, vanished it. It has disappeared.

On the air that blows through is a word,

peacefulness

Always we held in our reach. We always held right here.

It was locked up right here in this place too.

--me strauss Letting me be

Around the Curve

When I was younger, I used to dream and wonder about what might be, what could be, what even should be. In those very past, long, long ago days, I didn't know, didn't think about the idea of intentionality.

In the thoughts of a child, I suspect I still believed that life happened to me.

Imagine. I could imagine easily things that defied time and space. Imagining things that could be come reality was a skill that had never been put before me. Once in a while I might picture myself in a place or a role, but that was a possibility . . . if the rest worked out a certain way.

Life was a board game.

In the board games that I played the direction was one way. The goal was most often singulat. Finding a new path wasn't required or executable. It was go around and around, hoping that good things happened as I did.

It turned out that the world offers so much more. Dreams wait for me to dream them. Ideas await my mind to find them. Literal and figurative mountains stand where I might go to climb them. It depends on me. It depends on me understanding that I am.

I am.

I am my life.

Around the next corner, with the next sunrise, inside the next breath is my next choice, is my next vision. I can be whomever I am willing to invest my life in. Up the path, down the road, across the field is an opportunity, not a place I must go. I'll miss one to take one. If I know, then I know what I am doing.

I am my life.

It's not a hard thought to take on. It walking past that bend to see what awaits around the corner can only help me hone my direction.

I am my life. I'll walk toward the light, because I can.

--me strauss Letting me be

So Close Up

I wonder what it's like to be real, without people looking. I know for a moment or two every once in a while. . . .

Do they know? Do you think they know? I don't think they do.

When the words work backwards, and the math comes in cascading colors and I know how to explain the music of the stars, it doesn't matter. The joy is extravagant, extraneous, extra, so extraordinary, not ex-trordinary, but extra-ordinary, as in beyond. Every branch, every twig of every small tree waits quivering in the almost dawn, especting the sun at any moment, but it's not there. The rain comes instead.

But the rain isn't a sadness.

It's a shower. It's clean air and a ligher sky flled with hope, telling me my heart is right, my heart is true to north, to my soul. Could it be? Could it please be?

And the sun is joy.

Not like the stars or the moon, like the sun, it shines.

On my face, on the twig, drops of water magnify and make me brave when the world is close up. I turn my head a bit and I find by design reflections of who I am.

So close up, it seems that my heart wants to make the world even closer.

--me strauss, Letting me be/Thinking

In the Morning Almost There

I remember the days when we would camp outside. I'm not much of a camper. No, no, not a sleep-on-the-grouder, not ever. How I happened to be there, even my childhood years, I won't ever know. Room service doesn't go there. Bears and other things that aren't people tend take my attention from noises unseen in the darkness. It's not my shade of green, or gray, or black. No, no, not my color -- not my feeling. -- not even close.

Though I spread out my spirit under the wide, wide, so open sky, though I feel my thoughts calm and grow loarger as each moment brings me closer to the dirt, I can't help but wish for a real roof to keep the rain at bay. I imagine some screens to keep mosquitoes looking in other directions, because I am out of reach. They would be there. I would be here.

I don't sleep.

Rocks in the ground sit in my back. Night and it's sounds play in my head. They are calling my sense of imagery. No, no, not thoughts of wonderment. It's too stark there. It's too overwhelmingly uncivilized. I prefer wonder, but there's no wonder there in the dark.

Spooky, creepy ideas take me to a Stephen King book that he never wrote. I refuse to be inside a grown-up, little boy's nightmare book. I can devise and live in my own.

I write in my journal by the camplight. It's the Abe Lincoln me.

The quiet of the night before dawn there, drowns me with relief. I am settled and softened. I was made to be part of the changing light, part of the changes happening to the night. No, no, not a change in me. A change out there.

In the morning, almost there in my mind, I am where the sky shines like heaven visits it's gentle glow on me. Right here, right now.

In the morning, almost there, I wish everyone I love were with me. to feel what I feel.

--me strauss Letting me be

The Future Friend

When the future comes and I finally grow up, I will be who I can be. I won't hurt anyone. The meaning and the heart inside of me will reach out with the tenderness and hope that will show that I never mean any harm, that only to lighten the load.

Let me be useful. It hurts to hurt. It helps to help.

When the future comes and I finally find my feet, I will walk as tall as my frame will stand. The hand that I extend and words that I speak will be gentle and graceful. People will know that my heart has only room for them. I'll paint colors and give them away in the words that I write, in the pictures I draw with my pen.

When the future comes and I finally know that I have found the way to circle back and around in the perfect dance step, I will play a symphony just for my friends. No one else will ever know, the brightness, the brilliance, the blue-black, indigo of the night silence of the peace that I feel inside when I share a space with someone that I care about, that I have in my heart and my head.

When the future comes, I'll know how to hold someone's feelings within my own always and ever, never to make a hurt. Until then, I live in a world wondering at a future me that could do that even once without fail.

The hardest part of now is knowing what might have been and what the future might be.

It's the heart of a beginner to always have the future to offer a friend.

--me strauss Letting me be

A Blogger's Sunset

So many colors come together. Some hold my rapt attention. Brilliant, bright, they light my heart with sparks and glows. The things I know from having gone to experience them.

Some leave me to make no mention. They're holding court in my imagination. It's a positive attraction that blends and bends like water into my perception. My vision becomes a liquid rainbow of ideas to ponder and moments of wonder.

Fine shades of deepest meaning come through in the seeing and go deeper in the sharing with the others who have come to talk things over.

It's the individual, momentary, lasting beauty of a sunset in the company of friends will be friends when sunrise comes again.

This is my blogging metaphor -- a thank you song as big as a sunset with gratitude as profound.

--me strauss Letting me be

On a Sunday in New York

Sunday morning in New York, a parade is about to happen. It seems in a city this large. That a parade could be usual daily fare.

I once lived for parades, their showy organization. The pagentry, the color traveled from town to town, only to be three or four times on the 4th of July. Parades are people celebrating and working together. Parades are a show of something that people can be when they want to make a good thing happen.

Oh how I love a parade . . . I need to remember that on a Sunday morning when I need to get to get to the airport.

In a Fairy Tale

In a fairy tale, macro-photography becomes an edifice of majesty from the realm of an other world where almost invisible creature invite me to enter. I see them dancing. Their life is a reflection of their beauty. Their substance has all but disappeared.

I long to be like that, pure translucent, crowned with golden light. What must they be thinking? Do they think? Or do they live a joyful life of wondering? Imagine having the time to wonder over everything worth wondering.

Blissful imagination time.

No wonder their home is light and colorful. No wonder they dance on unusual front veranda that seems to have wings. How easy it would be to take to the sky with a wondering mind.

In a fairy tale, I saw wonder--full imagining. It was a trick of macro-photography.
Why am I sure the photographer didn't notice it?

--me strauss Letting me be

Meet Me on the bench

Meet me at the bench tomorrow. I have something to tell you. Would you meet me if I said that if was something? would you meet if it was nothing?

Or have you left, just like the others?

We used to meet there every day, and now I hardly ever see you. I feel as if I've been written out of your story. I used to be your friend. No I sit and hope and wonder if you;ll even try to hear me.