Letting me be . . . random wondering and philosophy

A Child of the Sky

2011-07-10T07:49:00.004-05:00

Every morning, I stand at the window in the living room watching the lake and the harbor as a new sky is being born.

I am a fan of the limitless horizon. I love watching the water in motion. I so like to imagine stories about the sailboats docked in the harbor. I am captured by the sunrise on the water.

But when walk away from the window, the fact remains soulfully filling me that of all things I am a child of the sky.

The sky doesn't hold or contain things. It's expansive and at the same time humbling. It's a universe of color and possibility. Sunrise, daylight, afternoon, starry night, with my feet on the ground, I can look up to see the sky and at the same time feel the universe inside me.

No matter the stress, the unkindness, the joy, the boredom, the hurry -- one look at the sky and life again has perspective and meaning.

No art, no symphony, culinary delicacy comes close to place that they sky reaches inside me. It's my father's hand, my mother's heart, my brothers' teasing, my best friends' trust, and my only son's lifetime love.

I don't need to reach for the sky. I need to remember it's in every cell of me.

Find the sky inside you.

-- me liz strauss, letting me be

Lines and People

2011-06-25T14:18:00.007-05:00

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I've always been fascinated by lines. I like how they separate and define spaces, how they turn as you move to change your perspective. I like the ways lines can become their own spaces between spaces. With a little imagination, lines can take me places in the same ways that lines move my eyes.

Lines are like people in the way that lines that have a purpose are more interesting than lines that do not. Randomness is lovely in people and lines, but lack of commitment is not.

Lines can enclose safe spaces or draw boundaries that give meaning.

Perhaps that's what people are doing when they draw lines around themselves.

Lines are filled with power and potential, like people.

And some have rough edges ...
But the ones that get softer over time, or in certain lights, I admire.

-- letting me be, me liz strauss

You Might Not Know My Friends

2011-06-18T10:08:00.005-05:00

You might not know my friends when you first meet them. You might not know them ever. But I know them well.

You might know them because you've never seen them, or talked to them, or listened as they tell the stories that make them who they are. Or maybe you have and you just weren't there.

You might not know my friends even if you met them as a child, gone to school with them, shared a house or worked in their store.

You may have spent years right next to them without seeing the friends I see.
I saw them within seconds -- sometimes before we said hello.

Is the same true of your friends?

We might never know.

letting me be, me liz strauss

Millions of Us

2009-06-08T20:25:00.005-05:00

It's called skin hunger. We need to touch each other. If we don't experience 16 touches a day, we unconsciously start bumping into people. Our skin gets lonely.

It's probably a way of preserving the species.

He said, "You knew."
I said, "So did you. Knowing isn't always believing."

Our spirit has a hunger. We need reach out for a energy, space, and beauty. If we don't experience 16 delights a day, we unconsciously start collapsing. Our soul gets lonely.

It's probably away of encouraging evolution.

In infinity a wide open spirit runs and rushes like water.
We howl at the moon only this time we're laughing.

And the energy and wonder
we give to each other by receiving
makes us all shine so outshine the darkness
that we cannot tell the people from the stars.

And I know and believe
we are millions of us.

Letting me be ... me liz strauss

25 Words of Wisdom from Successful Blog

2008-07-21T12:37:00.002-05:00

I made this using Slideoo at 90%.
The SlideShare version and explanation of the project is at 25 Words of Work / Life Wisdom — Pass It On!

25 words: Stare and Wonder

2008-07-13T18:58:00.003-05:00

Hungry morning.
I look out my window yearning.
I see a sky offering food for my soul.
I stare. I wonder.

How did it know?

--me liz strauss, letting me be

People May Appear Further Than They Are

2008-07-06T08:33:00.004-05:00

I waited. It was about an hour before we met up, when the call finally came. Then I had to call Andy to say that Paul had picked the BEAN as a meeting place. I didn't know Andy. I'd never met Paul or the gang he was bringing along. It seemed like the touristy thing to meet folks at the BEAN on the 4th of July, though.

We had these loose connections from online friends or crossing paths. By some weird star-like direction, we would gather for a beer and conversation as if we were long-lost friends.

I'd gotten ready for the call. When it came I put on my shoes and headed out the door. I wanted to be early so that I could look around. I'd only recently discovered that I could take a decent picture with my phone.

Twenty minutes early, I took my photograph reflecting off the BEAN. Then wandered to the garden and found some flowers who wanted to be part of what I was doing. One day it will be a maze taller than I am, but that day it was an amazing burst of purples, blues, greens, and an occasional red-orange. Got a few pictures before it was time to walk the gravel path back to the sidewalk that lead to the BEAN.

As I was walking, I realized I had worn my best boots to trek the gravel. I mindless wondered whether they would recover. Too late to worry. I wiped the dust off on the of my jeans.

As I walked up to the terrace around the stainless steel bean-shaped gate, a man talking on the phone smiled and waved. I said, "hello," hoping I knew him. Then, I hoped I had him pegged as the right one of the two. Luckily, the other guy phoned so that I could be sure.

We gathered, hugged, took pictures and video. Then we walked over to the local outdoor pub to share a beer and get to know who we were.

As I sat with five other with whom conversation came easily, I thought to myself, "This group is the opposite of the reflection in the BEAN."

People May Appear Closer Than They Are.

me liz strauss, letting me be

Precocious

2008-06-28T23:13:00.003-05:00

I'm sure it was third grade. We were 8 years old. We were precocious. We weren't supposed to know yet that we were all different.

We had figured it out.

What did we do with that information? We didn't know. We were only 8 years old after all.

My friend, Patty, moved to another city. I asked my mom, "if we moved, could we move there?" She said, "Yes, but it's unlikely because I've put so much blood, sweat, and tears into where we live now."

I didn't know what she meant. I only wondered whether if in a new place I had a chance of starting over . . . I already knew the answer was "no." It was a "no" on both counts.

That's the problem with being precocious.

You know your destiny, only then you think it's what you were stuck with -- not who you are.

We were all precocious. They said we were the most rebellious class to ever go through the school.

Why wouldn't we be rebellious, if we knew already?

Precocious. Knowing before you understand what to do.

I'm a grown up, and I still know that precocious feeling now.

Lucky for me, it's familiar.

-- me liz strauss, letting me be

Please Don't Stop

2008-06-15T08:23:00.006-05:00

When I write on paper, I write differently. I watch my thoughts as they leave my brain, moving down my arm to my hand and come out through the pencil's end. The words come more slowly and I look closely at them.

Something happens when I write on the Internet. Perhaps it's the fact that know other people are writing on other screens words that I'll read. It simply be that I'm looking up as if another person is sitting across from me. I am more aware that I'm talking with my keys -- that my words are a doorway to relationships.

Bit by bit, word by word, I've come to realize that the writing I do here is more than recording ideas and thoughts. People stop. People read. People answer what I say.

Their words meet my words. We communicate.

My heart and mind meets others here.

I hope that she tells them too.

"Please don't stop."

--me "liz" strauss, letting me be

She said, "Please don't stop."

I'm a writer. I'm not sure that I could.

Heart and Mind Online

2008-05-20T20:34:00.001-05:00

We hadn’t seen each other for six years. It was a pleasure being in her company again. Such a feeling of being home when I was thousands of miles from my address. She cooked us a marvelous dinner with homemade coffee-flavored ice cream in my honor.

Then as my dear friend, her husband, left us to talk together. She caught me up on her life and her grandkids. She showed me their youngest daughter’s wedding album. We talked long about the jewelry she had made since the last time I saw her.

Then she said to me, “Do you have a journal?”

“Well, yes, actually. That would be my blog.”

I froze. I thought, Oh my god! Did I actually call my blog a journal?

For nearly two years, I’ve been saying to folks, “I’m going to write a book . . . to set the record straight.” The American title was going to be

If You Think my Blog Is a Journal, I Think Your Swimsuit Came from High School.

I had just called my blog a journal.

What’s happened to me?
I’m the one who, even at the age of 9, could not write in a diary. I didn’t want anyone ever to read what I thought. Not even after I was dead. I’m the one, who at 22, graded my personal poetry. I didn’t want someone to think I thought the bad ones were good.

Yet here I am now heart and mind standing naked online. I’m leaving words forever in a place that has no eraser. . . . and I’m even known for doing it.

I took out my iPhone and showed her around a few things I wrote. All she said was, “Don’t stop, please.”

I didn't.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Had to Be Fairies

2008-04-19T20:28:00.004-05:00

Finally after a winter of adjectives that all mean gray, I felt the warm air off the lake on my face. I was looking out the 12th story window -- the one that doesn't open. Still it was not my imagination. Call it memory, if you must. Either way, my face and the lake air had connected again.

I grabbed my spring jacket, laced my shoes, and left the building. It was a good seven minutes that I just stood in the sun. I was thinking of the old Ray Bradbury story, "All Summer in a Day." My thoughts were clear on the idea that, if this were the only one, I'd take a day like this to hold in my being for a long, long time.

No direction. I went walking. I suspect I was smiling. Every detail of the new spring was a new life to me. The old lady in the brown winter coat looked so uncomfortable. The man walking the golden retriever looked like he had just been let out of jail. Personally, I felt like a puppy.

Wandering aimlessly. How long since I've done that? How long since I've just let my feet choose the way?

They directed me to a tree-lined side street. I found myself standing before a red brick stately home with a Chinese garden beside it. I watched the water in the stream under the bridge, as I looked through the wrought iron fence.

When I turned to go, my eyes feel on a little patch by a tree near the street. Someone had tossed theblooms from impatiens that had fallen off the potten plant on the porch. Who knows what that person was thinking?

I only know I stood imagining the fairies who brought them there. Had to be fairies, they were too beautiful. I walked home, glad to know that fairies still hang around.

Later that night I discovered a message from a long lost friend.

Sure am glad those fairies are still around.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

PJs and Possibilities!

2008-04-07T08:03:00.003-05:00

When I took the Myers-Briggs, folks I worked with expected me to come out a "J," someone who likes closure, everything tied up neatly in a bow. Sometimes I so wish that were true about me. It sure seems that parts of life would be easier if I had just a little more of the "J" qualities.

The situation was such that I had to manage against my natural Myers-Briggs "P" preference to keep my options open. Publishing schedules and deadlines required that for success in my job. When I work against who I am naturally, I often exaggerate the quality I'm going for, so I ended up looking like a total "J." Things got done efficiently, but sometimes without the playful options that I usually bring to make the work fun.

Now, I publish for me. I'm thinking a little "J" might be a good thing. I'm out a schedule and a planner and building some confidence in my ability to make things happen again.

Think of the possibilities -- a whole horizon -- of what I'll get done.

It's whole new option for working in my PJs.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

A Cliff of Decision Making

2008-03-16T06:11:00.002-05:00

I'm fairly sure I was born with a fear of heights.

Yet my uncle the photographer, the one with all of the expensive equipment would find every opportunity to take pictures that involved my cousins and I standing near dramatic scenery. How was it that I was always the one who ended up on the cliff side? It was always hard to find my way to a smile.

Even now, I can't walk up to the edge of a cliff without thinking that the sandy stone will give way. My imagination has me tumbling, down, down, down . . . even though, I'm fairly certain that's not meant to be a scene in my life.

I don't have the same experience when I reach a cliff of decision making.

Maybe it's the awe inspiring beauty of the world that sets me on my heels.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Cold Gold Night

2008-03-02T07:36:00.000-06:00

Now that the sun is back on the lake, I can think about cold, gold nights alone along the shore. The silence, the solitude that bring me to the reflections inside and on the water. I'm realizing I'm the one who imagines them there.

That's a good feeling, knowing who.

When I was kid, I lived each moment never wondering who I was, how the world was turning or turning out. Now with taxes and rent payments, I seem to spend time thinking of issues that will mean nothing on my dying day.

But a golden reflection alone along the shore of my true calling. Makes me feel warm and not alone at all.

--me strauss, Letting me be

Knowing Everything

2008-02-27T06:56:00.002-06:00

Once I was desparate to know everything. Information was all that I had to feel safe, to understand, to make sense of how things worked.

Once I came to know myself, the need to know everything dissovled. I am safe. I understand. Everything makes and the universe works.

--me liz strauss, Letting me be

Clever, Not Really

2008-02-24T21:13:00.003-06:00

I used to be clever.

If I wanted attention, all I had to do was show how clever I truly was.

Books were something I never had to read. I read them, devoured them, but I found them uninspiring. Rare was the book that offered me a thought that I'd never seen.

To be fair, I was quite clever. New thoughts were quite rare. I discovered the Pythagorean theorum before a book showed it to me. I connect dots most people couldn't see. I figured out things about people before writers wrote them in places I read them. I deciphered the mathematics of poetry and the poetry of mathematics, musically.

I was clever. It sure got me attention rapidly.

Deep inside, it felt like a magic trick, a gymnastics routine. "Look at me! I'm clever. Watch me do this! $10,000 if I'm not alive!"

Circus girl clever.

I didn't realize that wasn't the attention I needed. It didn't bring anyone closer to me.

Clever was clever, but I wasn't nice or reasonable.

Clever wasn't so clever, not really.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Heartfelt

2008-02-14T06:35:00.001-06:00

She said, "What color is the place where you keep your feelings?"

"Black and indigo like a moonlit night," I answered. "Close and safe, like a womb." And I felt myself, as I spoke, inside my feelings, as if I were inside a living cave.

"Where is this place?" she asked.

I formed my hands like two sides of a circle 10 inches across and positioned them in the air to the side of my left hip.

"What would happen if you moved them inside you?"

With that question, I was transported back in time softly, instantly. Looking out the window on a moonlit night in my past, I was realizing how I had pushed away, pushed out, set aside my feelings. From that past to that present, I had carried my heart alongside where no one could find it. It was close and attached, yet separate and alone.

I moved my hands to put my feelings back inside me.

In that moment, I knew the meaning of heartfelt.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

The Road or the Railing?

2008-02-04T06:20:00.000-06:00

When I got to the bridge, the sun was in the mid-morning place, where it's warm but not overhead. It's never quite so golden and hopeful as it is just then.

I'd been in the forest, wandering from tree to tree. I didn't know I'd been lost. I'd called it exploring. Yet every detail had distracted me. Every birdsong had stolen bits of morning. Had I been exploring I would have enjoyed it. I would have wandered with lust for the tiniest bits of color. But curiosity hadn't been who pushed me forward. It was a need to move without the corresponding direction to be going.

Then, I decided.

I simply decided.

It was a moment of standing in quiet reflection -- no mirror, except my own opinion. The answer was time to leave there, time to go be a person, this person. It was time to forward to my future.

And turned toward the sunlight I saw the bridge with the perfectly raked dirt road and the exquisite iron railing. It was bathed in the golden sun of mid-morning and it offered a luscious decision.

Take the road or take a moment at the railing.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Wishing in the Dead of Winter

2008-01-26T21:37:00.000-06:00

Ever really look at a grape hyacinth? It's a wish. It's a wonder. It's a full-color happening.

After a cold, cold, gray, gray winter, a few breaths past the first crocus, you might see one -- tiny thing. I used to wish them larger. I'd think of them as almost tiny trees. I wanted to stand under a grape hyacinth and look up into it the way I did other trees.

Such tiny things, I walk past without noticing their splendor. Where else do I see such vibrant blue, lush and full with life? When else does such a lovely gift come at such a perfect time?

So lacy and delicate. So full like the grapes their named after. So like an umbrella that became a delight. So blue that they overtake my imagination.

How could I possibly walk right by?

I'm wishing in the dead of winter for grape hyacinths.

I might never be able to look up from under one.

This spring I might give it a try anyway.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Golden

2008-01-20T04:14:00.000-06:00

When I close my eyes, when I look inside, I look for the hole in my thinking.

It's not the hole of what's missing. It's the whole of the vision. It's the view to what I'm feeling.

I have to wait. Relax. Reflect. Look. Listen. Look again. Then I see all of the moving things inside my eyelids begin moving.

They move apart. They separate. A tiny hole they make. I look through that hole and see a whole vision.

It's the way to my feelings, my future. It's golden.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Gone there

2008-01-18T04:16:00.000-06:00

The best part is I don't need an airplane. I just lean back in my chair, close my eyes, and I go there.

It's a perfect blue day with a perfect blue sky. Time's as open and wide as the ocean.

It might take a while in the night behind my eyelids to find the hole through to the light and the long sandy beach. But soon enough I feel the ground giving back. It's sand under the sneakers on my feet.

I follow the footprints, little three-part Vs that make curves and swirls on the shore where the birds have been. I hold my journal in my hand, wondering what it's for as I empty my mind into the expanse.

Then I sit and stare, letting thoughts pass by on the breeze that the ocean brings. I don't catch one. They don't stick or stay one. I know what it means to be free.

And the best part is that I don't need an airplane to go there.

There is me.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Time and a Word

2008-01-07T09:54:00.000-06:00

There's a time
and the time is right for me
It's right for me
and the time is now.

There's a word

and the word is love

and it's right for me.

It's right for me

and the word is love.
--YES, Time and a Word

When I had time, finding the word that was right for me, right for me, took such a time. What I could find were the words that belonged all around me, the words that confounded me, the words that weren't mine.

Then when I found the word, I lost place again. I lost my sense of when and who I was. I wandered and looked, wondered and still came back to the same word, but I was again fighting time.

Then finally I stood to say "This is my time, my turn."

There's a time and a word that are right for me, they're right for me.

Time and a word.
--me liz strauss, letting me be

Waiting for Visions of Sugar Plums

2007-12-24T06:07:00.000-06:00

Ah, Christmas Eve.
Anticipation. I remember living the waiting feelings long before I knew what the word anticipation meant.

On the night before Christmas, we would wait until darkness. At darkness, we would wait until we ate dinner. Then it was, wait until we cleaned up the kitchen and the dishes were all clean and put away.

No longer waiting for worldly things, we waited then for Dad to come home from work. Gosh, he was unpredictable to a child who wasn't talented at waiting.

hmmmm. I'm still not talented at waiting yet.

I seem to remember my younger, older brother making up games that set me walking around and around the dining room table. I sort of remember tasks that my mother devised for me that involved preparing and organizing for my dad's arrival.

When my dad came, finally!!, we would gather around the Christmas tree. The tradition would be that we opened one present from our parents and the presents from us, the children, to each other. The one from our parents was carefully chosen, especially mine. The criteria for choosing was what would keep me busy for the rest of the night.

hmmm. I wonder whether my mother actually bought something with that in mind. Knowing my mom, she did just that.

The rest of the night would be blurry . . . midnight Mass at the church, breakfast after at my cousins's house, home to bed at nearly 3 a.m. on Christmas morning. The dark house was romantic. Ah, what a memory! On tiptoe through the silence, as my mom started the turkey, I would get myself into bed.

Then the waiting began again. I would wait for the time when I could get up again. I would wait for sleep to come, wondering why it always took so long on Christmas Eve. I would wait for visions of sugar plums to dance on my head . . . but only see boring ornaments hanging from a boring tree.

I would fall asleep still waiting for sugar plums to dance on my head, still wondering what I would do if they did.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Hidden in the Sky

2007-12-17T03:56:00.000-06:00

Hidden in the sky, I see an answer. It's not written in the stars that twinkle nearby. Good thing, too, because few stars are out tonight.

It's written in the shades of blue, in the lights that play on the atmospheric canvas. It's echoing in chambers of my heart when I think of where I might do, what I might go.

In the curve of subtle color, I see the path of my life, all of the ups and downs, graphically smoothed. I see the way that time turns small misfortunes and unimportant frustrations into memories filled with laughter. I see the value that distance and perspective add to the view.

In the dark places, the stark places, I see negative spaces. So I put my fears and monsters there , watching them dissolve into so much black, black air. I imagine them as happy to be free of me as I am to be rid of them. I smile to think it's so easy to let them go.

There, over there, in the night sky is the hope of a new morning. It's the crocus that invites me into each day. I stop to savor it. I drink in it slowly like a luxurious dark chocolate cold, cold milk shake. My cells can feel the shades of blue change.

Hidden in the sky, I can see the future.
I can see the future because I can hear my soul.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Out the Winter Window

2007-12-16T06:17:00.000-06:00

In the winter, when a tired soul looks out the window, the lack of color can wear like a shroud.

When I was a child trees were for climbing. They were big, black, and huggable. Trees were as mighty and majestic God and as gentle as the creator who holds the world in his hands.

Sitting in the branches of a trees, I could be part of the scenery. Without thinking, I could look out knowing that life had a plan and a beauty. I reflect on that as a talent that comes naturally to a child.

Now I'm older, looking out a winter window at a gray day, a faraway day wishing for the sun and green leaves of summer. But I'm blessed and gifted with a childhood memory I can recall. It brings me back to the branches of trees that I hugged that hugged me.

Out the winter window, I see the colors of life and they fill my heart full.

On that last freezing wind, I sent every huggable memory to you.

--me liz strauss, lettingmebe

Waiting for the Words

2007-12-10T23:10:00.000-06:00

I was lost in my head, confused about who I might be, what I might be thinking.

In time, I found my way into a suitcase and onto a plane. I was my way to anywhere and I'd be landing in a place I once said, "I think I want to live everywhere." He had agreed.

That memory so stayed with me. Lately it had been haunting me, following me in a good way. Somehow my heart, my head needed another conversation. I longed to hear what the "me of then" said when we talked again this "years later" time now.

So I went and I listened in as best I could.

I imagined. I practiced. I put forth chapter and verse. I did all with a steady to what I might hear myself reveal in the spaces between the words. And the quiet came, when we sat, as friends do, in each others silent company, waiting without wondering. Thoughts coming when they came.

Then he said something that I remember this way, "It's the words. You. So much of you is about the words. What you do is the words. Wordsmith. It would be a loss to see you separate from the words."

And in a gray car on a gray rainy day, inside what he said I heard yellows and blues.

The words.

I've been waiting for the words. The words are every sunset, every cell of my fingers. The words are every hair on a baby's head. They are a summer shower. The words are the love of my father, the smile of my son. The words are this moment. They're the past and future. They touch. They triumph. They tremble. They tread and take my breath away. They are the petals on a most special sunflower. They are the rainbow that overshadows the sun.

The words are the salty tear that gently finds its way to my cheek as I write this.

I've been waiting for the words. The words are about to come.

When they arrive, my soul will shout what I was born to say.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

More Pollyanna Than Pollyanna

2007-11-17T07:53:00.000-06:00

"See the prism! See how it breaks the light into a rainbow?!!! Raindrops do the same."

It's such a Pollyanna world view.

When my mind offers me thousands of nuances, why would I choose any but the most beautiful? It seems that the times I do are times that I'm off-balance, off-center internally. It seems at those times, I'm not thinking really about the world, but instead that I'm thinking about my place in it.

She was a child -- Pollyanna -- a character in a story. She's become a stereotype of "what's too good to be true and too sweet to take seriously." Yet, supposing a person had her world view, lifting up, looking up, without unconditions or expectations that the world would respond in a negative way. Could just the believing and being make it true?

Seeing a rainbow inside a raindrop is more than "Pollyanna," it's a choice for hope and beauty. It's a choice for a better future and chance for human understanding. Even the real-life Ben Franklin knew that where we focus is a predictor of who and what we will be.

So, I'll hang my heart on the story of little girl with relentless positivity. I'll value my resiliance and not worry about being naive.

I don't suppose I'll ever be more Pollyanna than Pollyanna, but I sure can aspire to be.

--me liz strauss, Letting me be

Looking Up from Under

2007-11-13T05:30:00.000-06:00

Take the choice about where we look and what we see. . . .

I used to be ultra-sensitive to a feeling of when I needed to get out from under. Being under was a stifling location, claustrophobic and limiting. As I think on it, those limits were merely my inability to spread my view and take in the beautiful detail of where I was currently standing.

Under can be a learning place and a place to shine so brightly.

From underneath I can see the delicate workings of what holds life together. I can feel the shade of what's above me. I'm sheltered from the rain and the sharp sunlight. I'm gentled by the diffused rays that filter through to fall upon me.

I am more beautiful, softer, and less likely to draw attention . . . people have to want to see me, when I'm under. Then when they do, they see. They see.

I am quietly there and beautiful, looking up from under.

Looking at the Abstract

2007-10-28T06:46:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-18T20:39:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-09T07:07:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-06T04:50:00.000-05:00

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

In the Atmosphere

2007-09-23T04:16:00.000-05:00

Sitting in our favorite Italian sandwich shop, my roommate and I were only 100 yards from our dorm. The juke box was playing, Steppenwolf." I was off in a dream, an idea . . .

"What if, we could," I said to Susie. "What when we are teachers we could make it so that kids aren't afraid to learn? What then? Wouldn't it be fun? I mean, I learn so much more, so much more deeply when I'm confident and happy."

We talked all through our hot ham and cheese sandwiches on Italian bread . . . right into Neil Diamonds, "Forever in Blue Jeans." It was college. We were dreaming of the future.

It's hard not to be swept away with possibilities when my life is all about learning. Ideas that bring people up are euphoric. They should be.

I still remember the conversation and the exact smile I was smiling.

My dear roommate so knew me. She listened in earnest. Ah Susie. She and I agreed. Of course, she didn't suffer from delusions. Unlike her, I never let reality get in the way the potential that I might envision.

When I'd take such an excursion, my friend would smile and ride along, until the moment she made a motion of pulling in a kite string, and said, "C'mon, down." Then she'd point to the ground, still smiling. "C'mon, you can do it. You know where your feet belong. We have to walk back to the dorm soon."

Grounded.

I've always been lucky to have friends who kept my feet on the ground . . .

because the view from in the atmosphere is so much nicer.

I still believe that we can get there.

--me strauss Letting me be

Clear 'til Next Sunday

2007-09-19T04:02:00.000-05:00

It was a backyard rule. We couldn't go past Rose's garden ever. That was our boundary. Never leave that part of the country without someone over 18 years old until we were at least 10 years old ourselves. So once we were 10, that summer going past Rose's garden was all that we ever did.

It was far further than that.

It was at least 20 minutes past Rose's garden.

No map could show the way there. You would need the services of a Lewis and Clark pair such as my best friend, Craig and I, to manage the way. To this day, I can barely remember, and I doubt whether Craig can either.

The trek was a long one -- past Rose's garden across the rest of the backyard and up the riverbank. We followed the bank left through the sun, then through the trees, around the end of the slough where the dead fish washed up in the mud. We called that "Fish Grave."

Our mothers could always tell when we'd been there.

Picking our way through the driftwood and occasional decay, we'd zag our way across to the pennisula where the "Forest of Mysteries" held the stories we made. As we walked through the underbrush, looking for flowers and signs of humanity, we once described an entire village and the events of a battle that took place to keep it safe.

A massive granite boulder stood, near a path we knew. That was the "Resting Rock," where we thought important thoughts of important days. It was there we decided who we would be. It was there we determined how the world worked. It was there that we deemed the best movie of the year.

When we stood on that rock, we could see clear 'til next Sunday.

Just beyond, "The Resting Rock," when we were lucky, if we looked at the right time of year, we could find a path to a tiny, leafy place. There . . . just about 20 minutes beyond Rose's garden, where we couldn't go until we were over 10 years old . . . is where the fairies are. That's where dreams and wishes are made. That's where magic and happiness happens. Smiles start. Hearts warm. Kids aren't afraid.

It's a real place where the fairies are.

When you've seen clear 'til next Sunday, some things you know never fade.

--me strauss Letting me be

Blurry Dots

2007-09-07T20:55:00.001-05:00

I paint a dot. You paint a dot near it.
We talk about the dots we've painted.
I tell you what I see.
You tell me what you see. We trust.

Thank you for trusting me. What a graceful sharing trust can be.
Trust is a dance of faith, respect, and unconditional love.

Trust lights our faces with colors of possibility. It makes the colors blend beautifully as we turn.

See the dots, colored lights in an evening of a life are our thoughts hanging together. We trust, and we are better than we were alone.
I give my trust to add to the colors in your world.
--me strauss Letting me be

The Genius that Is You Returns

2007-09-05T22:01:00.001-05:00

And it can seem that you've been in the place of darkness visible for almost forever, even though you only have been for a few days.

The light that you feel shining on you makes you realize that the deepest thoughts of you have always been where you've kept them safe, maybe too safe.

I don't know. Would you know? I don't know. It's not a knowing thing. It's a feeling thing in this matter.

Open up to the light, find your way out to the world. Come back into the colorful vibrancy that is you.

Please.

Find the purples and blues in the indigo. They'll help you. I know. I've been there too. Reflect a white shining in the light of the lookers on. Don't get cold. Your fragility a beautiful thing.

Oh please.

Genius is as delicate as a hibiscus flower in the dead of night. It is solitary and silent when no one cares for it. It's unshielded, unsheltered, but gentle beauty breathes through every cell.

If you shy from the light, you might become lost and invisible.

The rainbows and the people who love are where you see soft light shining in. It's the light, that soft light, that makes the darkness visible. It's the light that will bring you home to us again,. When it does, you will make the heartless darkness evaporate. You will make history a thing of the past.

We'll wait the future. We will wait forever. We'll wait for the genius that is you to return.

And you will.

-me strauss Letting me be

To a Shy, Walking Hero

2007-08-31T10:53:00.000-05:00

When I was growing up, I had only one hero. He was a big man, with big hands that were gentle and strong. He blocked the sun that he said rose and set on my head from the second I was born. Then at night, he hung the moon, to make sure I had a light to guide me home.

It's damned hard to find heroes who live up to that.

I've found a few, a handful -- boys and girls, women and men -- humans who were more than good, who understood humanity, joy, life, generosity, and in end, unconditional love.

I look with gratitude to a universe that has given me so many heroes. My eyes fill with the emotion of knowing that we are all of the stars. When I'm alone, every one of them sits in the leather chair I don't own, in the den of my imagination. They read. I write. They sleep. I reflect. We breathe the same air on the same planet.

Some things in life you just know. That I know.

I dance on a beach for the heroes I have known. I walk pressing my feet in the sand under a sky only a universe could display. Hearing the water rush, hearing my heart pump, hearing the silent breeze, I sometimes see the hero in me. Mostly, I don't feel alone.

Once you have known a hero, that hero finds a home in your heart. That I know.

I write a soft, grateful thought to a shy, walking hero. I think my way back to believing in a world that turns in harmony. I stand tall under a blue sky in a universe that will not be thwarted, in a universe where people and stars still shine and sometimes even sparkle.

It's damned hard to find heroes.
One star shined for me today.
That I know.

--me strauss Letting me be

That Line No One Should Be Crossing

2007-08-30T11:45:00.000-05:00

I don't know when I discovered it. Most people have never seen it.

A few folks suspect it's there. That line no one should be crossing.

Don't cross that line, please. I didn't draw it there.

But that line is me and I'll make sure that you stay where you should be.

Some folks have said to me they suspect the line exists.

Most of the time I wonder whether I've only imagined it.

Not today. No not today. You made the line light up and shine.

Don't cross the line, please. I didn't draw it there.

But that line is me.

That line is me.

Few folks suspect it's there. That line no one should be crossing.

--me strauss Letting me strauss

Straight Line

2007-08-28T00:05:00.000-05:00

She said, "In all of the time that I've known you, I've never seen you walk in a straight line."

Funny, it feels differently to me.

Though I know the truth of what she said. It's so true. It's almost freeing to hear it, to know someone sees it, to not have to hide it.

Oh, but oh. Does anyone know? Could anyone feel, understand, or comprehend how hard, how desperately I tried it. I put one foot in front of the other. I stood with them together. The lines just kept moving. The lines never made sense to me. They broke and twisted. They twirled and turned.

It seemed so unnatural to try make a line that was perfectly straight. Not a twig or tree ever grew that way. Not ripple in the water ever took that shape. No thought in my mind could stay that disciplined, organized, or boringly, depressingly ordinary.

Or -din-ary.

It's the exceptional, the accidental, the tiniest flaw that steals my wonder. It's the static on my mind that explodes into new ideas. The silence of straight lines puts my thoughts to deep, deep sleep.

If I only walked in straight line, I would always be walking away.

--me strauss Letting me be

Juxtaposition of color

2007-08-26T05:06:00.000-05:00

A life is a juxtaposition of colors. So many light waves colliding and finding a way to make meaning during our days. A moment happens we capture it, and it places itself next to another. Together the two seem to say something. But maybe like breathing they are just what happened. Maybe events just topple upon one another.

My life is a juxtaposition of color in my head.

When I try to sort through the color I find it blends into so many shades, so many feelings. How can possibly say anyone of them has any single important cause, any lyrical inspiration. I wonder whether everything I am is just a function of the chemicals set free and shot through my brain.

Shake my world and you re-juxtapose the colors.

Let an idea be formed. It will make colors before it is said. Anger will pull forward shades of red to orange. Childhood will bring sky blue, grass green and sunshine yellow. College opens gray stone and brick red. Dancing and playing bring all of the purples and all of the gold that I've ever imagined could dress a flower. Thoughts of the moon or motherhood bring indigo black with warm back light of blue.

And my dad, my dad, brings all of the colors in every wavelength of the seen and unseen spectrum. They are all dancing in a kaleidoscope made by his powerfully gentle hands.

Unconditional love is the most beautiful juxtaposition of all.

--me strauss Letting me be

Floating Flower

2007-08-22T23:03:00.000-05:00

Like a floating flower, I'm not quite sure where I stand. My feet aren't touching the ground. Where are you?

I float, open and waiting.

Is this the way I was meant to be?

Like a floating flower in a sea of inky black. I have nothing to tie me down and nothing to hold me up.

I am open. I let the waiting float away.

I float free. I am a flower floating.

--me strauss Letting me be

Red to Orange

2007-08-21T06:06:00.000-05:00

Look out the window. The sky is gray over the harbor. The sailboats sit so lonely, rocking there. I'm left alone with my thoughts. Alone again. It's a familiar spot.

My childhood bedroom had my parent's wedding furniture. It was the most amazing mahogany stained to a light oak shade. The wood grain moved and swirled. When I was alone, I'd run my childish finger along the lines that were my bed's headboard, imagining they were a road.

The villages, the people. I populated an entire fantasy world.

Everyone worked hard. No one was tired. They sang and smiled. Life was good. Life was more than good, but I didn't know that.

From village to village, I'd go to visit the friends that I'd made in each one.

They were life. They were living. Who was to say they were less real than the people in the next room were?

And in the villages, they couldn't see when in my mind I'd change the universe. On joyful days, I'd see the wood in shades of purple. On quiet days, it would be blues to greens. Rarely there would be yellows. On angry, lonely days I'd see it go from red to orange.

Red to orange. How I remember that feeling.

Anger is a lonely place.

--me strauss Letting me be

Down the Hallways

2007-08-15T18:27:00.000-05:00

Sometimes my life seems like a open road, I'm in control of everything. Flowers bloom by side of a paved country road. Every now and then a pond glimmers in the sunshine.

Nothing could be more fine on a breezy summer day when I have nothing else on my mind. Nothing could fill me better. Nothing more could lighten my eyes or lift my cares away than a mental walk down my road.

Everyone has a road. It's theirs, of their own making. Everyone can go down their road any old time.

So why do I sometimes find myself walking down that hall that closes me inside? Halls are interesting, even those where the doors are artfully juxtaposed inside, inside, inside, and inside. And I keep thinking that the sky is outside. Outside is where I go to wonder and play.

I touch the wood walls. I slide my feet along the smooth floors. I hear my voice echoing as I whisper to remember my name. It's my name. It's my name. I say that over and over and over. Finally I reach the very last door.

When I walk through, I find . . . . the meaning of my life.

It doesn't matter, it wouldn't look the same to you.

But for me there is the most marvelous night sky in which I can see my name.

Heaven knows we're alive.
--,me strauss Letting me be

People called her Daisy

2007-08-13T21:01:00.000-05:00

I only had one child. He only had one mother.

Dear older, older brother,
I'm thinking about our mother. I've grown to become much like her. I'm like the woman who was your mother. Your mother was different from my mother.

A little girl who died after nine days changed her.

One woman, she was, but she was two mothers. She was the one before and the one after. The sense of loss never quite left her.

Dear older, older brother,
Do you know how lucky you were to have known her? I can see her heart from here. She was a flower reaching for the sun,. She was strength and intuition. She so loved her children. She knew wo many things. She was stubborn, feisty, and a force to deal with.

I am a child of her gene pool. I am a mother like her. But I had a different mother.

My mother was older, sadder, and farther. I had to reach to find her.

I have one son. He has one mother.
Or do I? Or does he?

We never really meet our parents until they leave us.

People called her Daisy.

--me strauss Letting me be

Raise the Sky

2007-08-11T21:05:00.001-05:00

Everyone has been here. If you have not, are you alive? The sky comes low, and I feel the pressure. I'm bone tired. I wonder what it's like to die.

Who wants the sky down like a ceiling? Dark and low, overhead, it's not my friend. The colors so far off are holding my fire, my feelings. I need to raise the sky off my head.

The air is pressing in on me.

I stretch a bit to make me taller. The clouds respond with an upward move. A breeze begins. It's just light one, but a tiny hair tickles my face. I see a glimpse of light upon it. I feel a sparkle in my eye. I stand that little bit taller. The clouds again respond by moring high.

They say we make the weather. I've never tried to make it rain. I went for snowfall at midnight on Christmas eve once. Sure enough it really came. Yet, who'd have thought, when I was feeling pressured, that all I had to do was raise the sky?

--me strauss Letting me be

Mystical Mysteries

2007-08-02T06:36:00.000-05:00

Another anniversary of the day that you were born. I think on the world. I think of my father. I think of the sky and trees.

The world is wonder waiting for you to conquer it. You'll turn it to serve you and you'll end up serving back. Folks will delight, destroy, and disarm your best laid plans. Friends will move on. You'll wonder where they went. One or two will stay to be always friends.

I'll sit in the audience holding a net for you. I sit hoping that you fly and never need me.

You're deciding things, making a place in society, walking the path with wise men, walking the path with fools. You always did too much thinking.

Please don't worry. You have all you need. You never needed me. No, not really. You are a powerful presence like a deep, dark tree on a lavendar, pink morning. You stand vigilant when the others run. That's your secret weapon. Then you smile knowingly with a sweetness that captures a heart.

I sit thinking how lucky the world is to know you.

The world is filled with wonder and mystical mysteries . . . I'm filled with the mystery and wonder of you.

--me strauss Letting me be

A Walk

2007-07-29T23:35:00.000-05:00

If I could walk with a wise man, would I know enough to listen?

A View of Green Grass

2007-07-21T05:22:00.000-05:00

Flat on the ground, eye level with the green, green grass of summer, I don't like the feel of all of that. I'm too sensitive. Every breeze makes a blade of grass move over me. I'm too aware of it. When I know I'll be in the grass, I wear jeans, sneakers, and socks so I can be aware of something else. Otherwise I'm too distracted.

Yet one day I sat in the grass with a young man . . . handsome and tall. I was even more sensitive. Every breeze was a wonder to watch as each bold blade moved. It was majestic. It was romantic. I was anticipation. We read a book together. We talked and drank wine. Then we fell forward to look through every blade of green chins on our hands like children. The grass looked wonderful from eye level. It was majestic. It was romantic. It was memorable.

Some things depend on your point of view. Ummm.

--me strauss Letting me be

Under Your Umbrella

2007-07-14T21:59:00.000-05:00

It's not raining.

Space, sky, sand, the safe place of your mind are what I know of you. Over the years and miles, we never got far enough from somewhere. Buildings, not the sky or sand, were our habitat. Still we were there, walking outside of the places where faces and hands, voices and plans for the future piled high to obscure the view.

We were too young and too curious to choose.

Hardly did we know that we walked a tightrope, that we were pulled, not that we pushed. It was hard like concrete on our softest ideals. We kept them close. Most folks hardly noticed, if they noticed. We were burglars on tiptoe, skirting the curtain watching them leave the auditorium. We didn't know we were players ourselves.

Now as we walk on the sand, with the sky and the space all around. I think of how I've lived under your umbrella always then, always now. Even when I didn't know where you were, you were here in the golden sun holding my hand.

It's not raining -- it never is where you are.

--me strauss Letting me strauss

A Conversation with a Waterfall of Light

2007-07-06T06:55:00.000-05:00

He said let's go for a hike. I'm not much for walking, unless circumstances are just right.

But I did, because they were and because it was with him.

It was a day from forever. Who says no to family? to a boy I grew up with? to guy I didn't know until we discovered each other a few short months earlier?

We were in our twenties. We had so much to talk about. We knew so much about life.

After being the two who were shy, suddenly we were the two who could for hours about people, about dreams, about how to make a decision.

Now he was taller than I am. His voice had become husky and deep. His laughter full and alive. He was no longer Grandma's little priest. Did she ever call him that? Why did we? How did that start? We didn't know.

We are the same age six days each year. We have so much and so many people in common. How could it take us so long to find out?

We walked and talked about the things that we didn't know growing up. We both had thought that our aunt and uncle (who were siblings) had once been married to each other. He said he'd thought that until high school. I said, "So did I."

It was all afternoon that we walked and shared our experiences. His family was his, and mine was mine. But our problems were ours, and they looked the same when talked about them.

One by one, we analyzed the people who lived in the center of the Venn diagram where our two families met. Our mother's mother was at the top. We spent the most time on the ones we knew least about -- those who had gone their own way, followed their own path, left the others behind. Suddenly as the lone wolves of our own packs, for the very first time, we had a feeling that we were their kin. I remember we stopped to divorce our families to start one of our own.

By the time we got deep into the state park, we had wondered why we hadn't had a conversation earlier in our lives.

It was then that we came upon the most amazing waterfall. It was a waterfall of light. We sat and talked for three more hours. For chunks of time we just watched the water fall.

He and I must have looked like lovers, because one couple who came by sort of hinted at changing partners for the day. We still laugh about that. They didn't stand a chance of competing with the conversation, the laughter, and the water made of light.

The way the waterfall reflected the light, the way the light was reflected in the waterfall, that was the way of our conversation.

Everything in this story is true, even the parts that didn't happen.

--me strauss Letting me be

Right here in this place

2007-06-30T22:11:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-23T22:08:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-20T01:20:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-16T22:02:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-13T21:36:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-12T07:50:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-10T07:13:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-05T23:16:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-03T23:42:00.001-05:00

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.

Less than 80, Far Greater than 1

2007-05-28T08:37:00.000-05:00

In response to the lovely and meaningful work of Robert Bruce,
How to Write a Poem.

It takes the math
for words to sing
it takes the math
for music
yes. and the heart
without heart
how flat
touch my heart

play to my head
too sharp, too piercing
bladelike screeching
fall flat, lay down dead

it's the math
the spaces
colors dancing
major and minor keys
not music, feelings

reality
intentionality
hiding the elephant
revealing what's not really
whispers

lies
truth
in between the thoughts
in between the breaths
in between you and me

I listen
a melody
where none is offered
I watch
a true story
that hasn't happened
I feel
a voice touching . . .
a voice poetic
refusing the mathematics. . .
that less than 80
can be
far greater than one.

es 5/28/07

The Mystery in the Mist

2007-05-25T01:08:00.000-05:00

I wonder whether others can see the mystery inside of me. It's churning like a faintly wet mist. I can almost see, but not quite. The ground is unsteady, soft and unready. My feet are unwilling to walk where I can't see the vision.

Is that the vision? Is that my fear? Is that a glorious picture of potential energy that doesn't exist? The air is clouded by that faintly wet mist.

The weed tree that wasn't there three months ago, five months ago, has more than suddenly appeared. It stands as if it has always been there, in the finely trimmed ideas of who I am. It shakes in the breeze. It bends in the wind. That could be good. That could be all of the flexibile fluency with words and ideas that defined me for all of my years.

It could be an answer.

I reflect.

I don't think or ponder. Instead I am a mirror, but this time, I am reflecting me. I think.

My heart takes hold of the view. The faintly wet mist moves so slightly back so that I might see just a glimpse of the silent trees growing along the river.

My heart warms my thoughts. I can wait until I know. Unitl then, my heart will believe enough that knowing will be an idea like the rest hidden in the faintly wet mist, in the mystery of the mist.

Don't push the river. The river pushes itself.

--me strauss Letting me be

The Bubbles and the Light

2007-05-22T11:03:00.000-05:00

Are they up? Are they down? Which way there they going? So many bubbles in a glass, gathering, separating, not really connecting. They remind me of a person or two I once invested in. Lighter than air, lovely to look at, intriguing, entertaining, but they are not meant to be emotionally sustaining.

So many bubbles in the world, you can see right through them. When we're small and young, they are glittery, glamorous, and magical. They are vehicles, wishes, fantasies. To be with one is to share in romance, is to dance without a care on a green, green lawn behind a mansion in a fairy tale.

Ah but, when we're tall and grown, they are empty, hollow, and hard to care about. They are useless, lifeless, colorless. To watch one is to see something about to disappear and to not really care. Even the mathematics is ordinary.

The bubbles of my life only beautiful when the sun shined through them. Then it was the light that made them shine. It was the light, not the bubble, that I saw. It was the light that had all of the the potential.

And the light still shines even though the bubbles have long since gone.

--me strauss Letting me be

Luck and the Little Things

2007-05-21T21:19:00.000-05:00

The beauty of Budapest lived up to all I had ever heard. So did its mystery. Though my visit was a Zen trip taken for the moment of night in need of romance and wide skies, the details were rich and tangible. The air was crisp and still as a soundless universe. My mind was perfectly placed for reflecting on life, on learning, on luck and the little things.

As I moved over to sit on the stairs outside the city of Budapest, I thought about the things that worry me. Each year they seem to be a few inches taller, but moved a few inches farther from my line of vision. So they look a few inches smaller. They look like little things.

I haven't have the best of luck in these last few years. I haven't had the worst luck either. I keep thinking on my friend who asked me, "Do you think you are a lucky person? Why, then, would you think that all of your luck would be good?"

I smile and call him clever again. It's a little memory about a little luck.

I've had my share of luck and little things. They seem so different to me when I'm alone under a dark sky in another part of the world, sitting on the steps outside the city of Budapest.

Luck and the little things . . . everything seems a little thing when a big wild sky is over me and a beautiful city is steps away.

--me strauss Letting me be

The Moon and Heaven

2007-05-03T23:44:00.000-05:00

Some would say it was a dream. It wasn't. I was sitting by the ocean in the dark of night. I had given up hope of being the person I was supposed to be.

Everything that I was. Everything that I believed in had been challenged, worse than challenged.

Life does that sometimes, but I had run out of the love and the energy to hold my cells in repair. I didn't have juice to make joy. I couldn't make the sun rise anymore so I sat in dark watching the moon that my dad hung for me.

The moon, the moon on the water. It danced on the waves with a rhythm that rocked like chair. The moon it was like my father glowing with love and always waiting and watching over me. Just when I thought I was lost. Just when I thought I'd give up a whisper color a faint orange began to appear. Then slid like liquid across the sky.

Just when I thought I was forgotten. Just when I thought I was invisible and drowning a most marvelous light exploded in ways I could not refuse to see. The lines were brilliant and so vibrant. The colors pulled my eyes in ways daylight couldn't compete.

And as if my own father had been in charge of the light show, the moon gently laid itself on the water and began floating to me.

Then I knew. I knew then I was who I was.

Angels were everywhere once again.

I saw the moon and heaven that night.

The moon and heaven knew about me.

--me strauss Letting me be

Endless Silence

2007-04-30T00:01:00.000-05:00

A Day of Silence — April 30

A Wall of Block Glass

2007-04-29T01:12:00.000-05:00

When I was a child, on each side of our front door there was a pnael of block glass. I was there when then men built in the porch, set the door, and placed the glass blocks to stand beside it. The squares were the first block glass in my experience.

I wondered about how they were like hollow ice cubes. Phoney and dry. They were cold to the touch, but sort of green. That just wasn't right. Nothing was friendly about the block glass, yet my mother so liked it. I tried to see why.

When I grew up and learned that block glass was a symbol, a statement about a time, I warmed to it, especially when I saw it on home shows on television. I liked it when it was used inside as a part of the house design. For some reason it made more sense to me then. Block glass and I struck up a friendship. It's a reminder and a protection.

This night when only clouds without stars hang from the sky, I feel strangely like I see a wall of block glass keeping watch over me.

--me strauss Letting me be

When the Air Is Smiling That Way

2007-04-20T23:53:00.000-05:00

It wasn't a big stick that I used to draw in the sand. Big sticks aren't easy to come by when you're the moving water on a beautiful day. Who thinks of sticks when the sun is shining, and the air is smiling, and a friend is walking just a feet over on a parallel path?

When you have all of the time that you need to STOP whenever you want to take in the view, to feel the sand under your feet, you worry about sticks to move things away. You bend down with your hand and make the shape of your heart in the sand.

You let the waves carry it away, light as a float, soft as the breeze, lovely as the sky that seems to be dancing.

You don't need a big stick on day like that or any day after, because a big stick can't be had on a day when the air is smiling that way.

--me strauss Letting me be

For Virginia Tech

2007-04-17T15:13:00.000-05:00

A Day of Silence — April 30

The Universe of Understanding

--me strauss Letting me be

Head and Heart

2007-04-13T22:57:00.000-05:00

I can't help but think of where I was living and what I was doing and how hard held on and believed when I was 36 and 37 years old. I remember so well once when the world so let me down and I said to a friend, "I won't give up. I don't want to believe in a world that works like you say it does. I won't. I can't."

Yeah I know how it feels from the inside out. I know it's not about things on the first or second layer of an onion.

But you see, when you're in twenties, life is about learning how to not be kid, even though the world still really treats you like one. . . . And it seems all about belief.

And when you're your in your thirties, it's about figuring out that your life is your own and you're on this planet for real for three decades already -- oh my god. Somehow it seems all about skill and belief.

Then you get past forty and you notice that all of the problems and decisions look like problems and decisions that you've seen in some form or another before. It seems all about experience, skill, and belief.

If you're lucky and rich in friends, and maybe once somewhere you touched some unconditional love . . . you remember that it's about all of the above and . . . . never separating your head and your heart. When they're together, it's a lot easier to know what to hold and what to let go.

Head and heart, that's my secret.

--me strauss Letting me be

One Moment Before Spring

2007-04-12T22:13:00.000-05:00

One second before spring finally comes, a moment happens when all the world lifts head and is filled wondeful new beginning. Only one brief moment, it'a breath of free, fresh air.

One second before spring finally comes, a thought passes over every person. Maybe this year will be the special one. It will carry the promise that we used to believe in when we were little, laughing kids high on swings in the air.

One second before spring finally comes, every flower seems to shimmer with a glow seems from a spectacular light above, and the flowers look like they stand taller and more beautiful than any flower in history might ever have.

Then a moment later, spring breaks out in full-blown, undeniable, living color love.

--me strauss Letting me be

The Definition of Love

2007-04-04T06:28:00.000-05:00

When I was a child, in my father's eyes, the sun rose and set on my head. The relationship was round and whole, always my hand inside his, always my chin turned up toward his, I knew he hung the bright moon. We spoke the language of unconditional love and understanding. The perception between us was at the deepest soulfelt level. He never once said no to me. He always asked if I was happy. Somehow my life was filled with deep take care for his happiness too.

At no moment in my life could I think a thought, say a word, or wish a dream, that would bring harm or hurt to him. It was beyond imagining to allow even the slightest sadness to cross those brown eyes that would so soften when my reflection was in them.

I knew every cell of him. He knew every cell of me. No hidden motives or baggage ever came between. No mistrust, no mistaken words, two hearts fully open in joy was the reality.

When I was 26, my mother, his wife, was dying. She was in an irreversible coma.

Like so many days, through my entire life, my father stretched back on top of his bed. I sat beside him my head his barrel chest. This time instead of him listening to me. I was listening to him. He spoke for less than 10 minutes. It was the only time he spoke of what might have been.

As the youngest child, the way my parents did things was the way that families worked. For as long as I knew, my folks were like early TV parents -- they didn't sleep together. My mom would fall asleep on the couch. She said she liked the couch behind her back. . . . besides he didn't get home from the saloon until 4 in the morning. Then he snored so loudly you could hear him two rooms away. My mom got up at 6 a.m..

That day when I was 26, my dad asked me a question about himself.

He said, quite simply, "Do you think I wanted to sleep alone all of these years?"

I was stunned to hear it, because my mind went Do I think? Do I think? Oh my god. Here is this person I know better than I know me and I never had this thought. How did I miss this chance to care about him?

Then he said what is the definition of love, "It made her happy."

This man, my father, the man that I knew so deeply, told me something about himself I never saw -- "perceptive, deep feeling. live my life to never hurt him" me-- I never saw it.

I never saw it, because he didn't need me to see it. He didn't need anyone to see it.

On that day in his quiet voice he told me for a reason. He wanted his daughter to understand how he loved the woman who was dying.

I laid my head back on his his barrel chest. I heard his heartbeat for her, for him, for me.

He made sure that love lived on.

It made her happy.

Four words that made me.

--me strauss Letting me strauss

Wondering about Stars

2007-04-01T19:44:00.000-05:00

How many stars does it take to make a sky? How much blue black, I wonder? Where in the world am I right now?

People are made of the same stuff as stars. People often reach for them. People can shine as brightly as a star, giving light almost everywhere without even knowing.

Like the stars or on a cloudy night, some people might almost disappear from view, if you don't know where to find them.

Yet the stars are hot, gaseous balls of fire, and so many people don't seem to have a fire inside them.

How do people remember they are stars?

Isn't that why we walk at night staring up at them?

I wonder if stars could, what they would think about the people who are made of the same stuff as they are.

--me strauss Letting me be

On Generosity and Friendship

2007-03-31T08:58:00.000-05:00

Every gift, every frienship goes both ways. Without that duality they are not what they seem.

Each of only so much time to share. When I'm not sleeping I can give my time to my work which feeds my family, to family and friends which feeds my soul, or to others which feeds the community and makes new relationships, new family and friends.

I love doing all three. Each is a choice. Each when I choose is an act of generosity.

When people hear I like to help others, sometimes they come to me to ask for help. Often they understand that when I give my time to their cause or endeavor, I am using time I might be spending on my work or with my friends and family. That's lovely, that's a gift to me. It allows me to be generous. Everyone likes to be generous. Generosity is a wonderful feeling.

Now and then others come who ask but don't realize. They expect my help. They overlook that I am giving by choice. That takes away my generous feeling -- it becomes a one-way exchange.

Every gift, every friendship goes both ways. It seems strange that because I am generous, people who don't know me expect generosity from me. It happens so often.

Generosity is a gift that disappears the second it is no longer seen.

--me strauss Letting me be

Thinking

2007-03-25T14:55:00.000-05:00

They say that the difference is that we know how to think, but I've met so many folks who just don't. They don't want to. They don't like it. They've forgotten how or been taught that it's dangerous.

Oh man, just to think, just to dream, just to watch the clouds and imagine what could be.

Sometimes I think about things that happened once.

Once I painted my face with my mom's lipstick to put on a show. I didn't know she'd be mad.

That makes me think that I figured out by the age of eight that whenever I expected my mom to be mad she never was. It was when I never expected that it happened.

Now I'm thinking about that . . . thinking is like taking a trip with no map.

--me strauss Letting me be

A Different Life

2007-03-19T00:28:00.000-05:00

Imagine a different life.

A different reality is happening. People in a place far from this are seeing magnificence. They don't cars or concrete. They don't know air conditioning. They don't know clocks or commuter trains. They don't know you or me.

What they know is wide, wild space, and broad, beautiful skies. What they know is the music of the breeze and the language of the grass and leaves. They can hear still water move. They can hear the sun shine with the gold and yellow of unimaginable light, bright in the dark of the oncoming evening. Color and life is more than 3-dimensional there, and feelings don't tear at the mind and heart. They live in the whole body.

A different reality is happening.

Imagine a different life.

One that was meant to be.

--me strauss Letting me be

Red Tulip on the Table

2007-03-14T00:03:00.000-05:00

It was there on the narrow table, under the window. A perfect red tulip placed by an unknown hand, for an unknown reason.

It was a gift. it was a puzzle, but for only a second, because it was hard to care about how it got there. The juxtaposition, the color, the light all worked in a way to say that was the only place this red tulip should be.

I wanted to stand and stare until my legs couldn't hold me. I wanted to perfectly mirror the red, yellow and green of the tulip in the colors that I wore that day. I wanted to imagine the story of the hand that had placed it there. I wanted to believe that it been left by an angel for me.

Tulips work hard to become flowers. They pass through freezing temperatures to find their way to Spring. The hard the winter is what provides the environment to feed the flower.

I wanted to believe the tulip was reminder about life that came when I needed it.

And so I did.

A red tulip perfectly set on a table wasn't a flower. It was a symbol of the hope, a gift perfectly chosen that arrived perfectly on time.

--me strauss Letting me be

Camp Tuck-Me_in

2007-03-13T00:07:00.000-05:00

When we were small, it was a boy's scout camp with the coolest Indian name. Kee-sha-wa. I used to love to say it. The boys stayed in tents for the weeks that they spent there. They sleeping bags on the ground. My big brothers went there. They brought home arrowheads and things they had carved with knives. The boys swam in the Illinois River.

The boys' camp sounded so much more exotic than the camp I went to for a week, Tuc-a-batch-ee, which to me said Camp Tuck-Me-In -- where the girls go to learn how to throw like a girl. The camp itself reinforced my concept -- we slept in cabins and swam in a pool. I always wondered what it would be like to stay at the boys' camp. After all, I read The Hardy Boys, not Nancy Drew.

Finally I got my chance, they turned the camp into a bed and breakfast. Wouldn't you know? My friend and I got a nice cabin-like room over the old "pool house," to the pool the boys never used. At least, I got to sit out on the deck under the stars and imagine sleeping there as a kid. It was closer to Camp-Tuck-Me-In. We were in a tiny house -- kitchen, living room, jacuzzi, and feather bed.

And then . . . at 4a.m. as I sat out on the deck. I heard a noise. It didn't sound like deer, or a dog, or any familiar creature. But surely it had to have been.

Right then I thought Camp Tuck-Me-In was the right place for me after all.

--me strauss Letting me be

Extraordinary

2007-03-12T00:03:00.000-05:00

It's always been my road that I'm walking. No one would argue that fact. I've never walked in a straight line. My road will attest to that. I've walked this road when I was too tired to crawl. I've walked this road when I was really dancing and half skipping my way to the next curve to see the other side.

I've wondered whether there is one part of the road that my feet have never touched and never will. I've wondered whether the trees alongside the road think of it as their road too.

I've spent years trying to find another road I might take. I've conjured other roads that were flatter, more hilly, and even dreadfully straight. I've always known that my destination is rare and one of a kind. How could my life be so twisted and tred upon any other way? Since I was old enough to know the idea of future. I knew mine held something extraordinary. Nothing ordinary seemed the way.

But I've never asked myself where exactly this road is going and how it came to be mine. Maybe it's time that I figure out what my road is about. It is the amazing reason I get up every day.

me strauss -- Letting me be

An Ocean of Life

2007-03-11T00:03:00.000-06:00

I awake in the sand, long after the sun has warmed everything. The tide has gone out. Was I dreaming of gold? Did the tide take my dreams?

Or is it as I have often believed . . . that we become more emotional at night and in the daylight is when our best plans are made?

A boat is waiting. An adventure under a blue sky never made me afraid of living. I lay back in the sand and watch the clouds. They are all moving slowly as if to say

What do you mean to do with your life? Are you satisfied with the path you have chosen? Do you know where you want that path to lead? Or are you just going.? How will you know when you finally get there? How will you know when you get anywhere?

In the sun on the beach, those question aren't so frightening. I burrow in and let them float over me. My head is like a gentle clock ticking It's a soothing sound like a train cross regular track seams. A mental rocking is the center of my bieng.

I visit my heart, my sould, the place where the "me" of "me" lives inside of me. I realize that I've let mistakes become more of me than the sweet humanity I was blessed with.

I gather up my patience, my courage, and my curiosity. I walk to the rowboat, get in to sit, and I know that things I once thought important are merely details.

There's an ocean of life that I've never seen. Maybe I'll watch it from this rowboat.
Maybe I'll let it bring me a dream.

--me strauss Letting me strauss

Golden Future

2007-03-10T00:04:00.000-06:00

It is nightfall on my dreaming. I an worn at the good things that are happening. I have no understanding, I have no grounding. I want to know, yearn to know. Where have my colors gone? They didn't fade. They've been replaced. They've been lost from my view.

These happy things, these happenings have turned everything golden.

So I sit by the golden water and wonder. What is it exactly is calling me? I take the calling deep inside me, spelling each letter of the word seriously. Is it the word calling or is it that I've always known that there was something waiting, something for me to do?

Why have I always had this feeling, this knowledge, this purpose for being?

I write in my journal thoughts of a golden ring. I lock in my eyes the golden future others say belongs to me. Sitll as the pool, I close the book and look outward. I stare inside and our of me. I stare at the golden water. It's minutes. It's hours. . . . lt's me watching a liquiid future with a gentle sun shining on it.

A golden future, that's still only water that I can walk up to, but it will not hold me.
Dreams on water seem tenuous and not considered.
But water gives life as sure as I breathe.
I stare at the golden water and see my life there before me.

--me strass Letting me be

Hole in My Imagination

2007-03-09T00:01:00.000-06:00

I have two big brothers, but they're 8 and 9 years older. Because of that gap, I have the traits of a youngest, an oldest, and an only child. All three are right-brain thinkers in a left-brain world. That has blessed me with an ability to observe, to see patterns, and to imagine futures.

I can conceive ideas, simple and elegant, that people are drawn to. I can draw beautiful, compelling pictures with words. If I still myself and actively listen, I can touch the words people need to explain what they're feeling. When the stars are just so, I can take on their feelings. I can know how they'll respond to the tiniest breeze even when they don't know that they've felt it.

I can imagine. I can envision. I can see inside of me and outside of me at the same time while I sit out in the universe.

I've traveled around the world 7 times. Yet this week I found that I am a small town girl with a hole in my imagination.

When I was in college my nephew was born. When he finished college, he traveled to South America. When he went, I asked myself, "Why didn't I ever consider that? Why didn't I ever think about going to an Ivy League school? Why didn't so many things ever cross my mind as possible?"

I started imagining bigger things from that day forward. I lived with the biggest imagination of anyone I knew. I scanned the universe constantly for possibilities.

Still I can't imagine what I can't imagine.

If I never encountered anything close to the ideas of kestrel, kaleidoscope, or kingdom, how would I come to imagine them? How do I imagine what I imagine? All things come from the bits that my experience, my curiosity, and my teachers have shown me.

Most of my teachers didn't know what to do with me. They let me learn on my own. Someitmes they let me teach them. My dad was my only mentor. It wasn't from lack of looking, that I never found another. I was late connecting my head, heart, and feet.

Now a teacher tells me of something I've never imagined, wouldn't know the first thing about, and don't have the method or means, I don't think, by which to make it happen. Yet she sets it in front of me as if it is the next step in a natrual progression.

Few things have so completely captured my attention, as this puzzle.

Oh, but for that small-town hole in my imagination, I would know what to do now.

--me strauss Letting me be

A Light in a Colorful Sky

2007-03-08T00:02:00.000-06:00

What dream it was. I awoke expecting the sky to be an entirely different color, and the day to be swirling with new ideas. Well, my head was swirling with new ideas, but the sky was it's usual blue and the clouds were their usual white.

But the dream was still with me in my head.

I had been walking a long, long road, trying desparately to find my way to a place familiar. I was overwhelmed, overtaken by color and darkness and the feeling that I was where I should not be. Then a voice, one I was coaxed into approaching. I'm not sure why I went over to talk to this lady. But the lady started telling me what my future needed to be . . .

She said she saw me as a leader of leaders, a light in a colorful sky. She said those that I needed must be mature and have their own means, so that I might ask them a question of my life.

The question is what still stays with me now as I ready to dream tonight. It was "How might I serve them as a leader so that I might bring wealth into my life?"

She called me a leader of leaders, a light in a colorful sky.

The strangest part of this dream was that I was not sleeping when it transpired.

-me strauss Letting me be

The Light in the Meadow

2007-03-01T00:03:00.000-06:00

When my very best friend, Craig, and I were about 12, we went exploring. We took two bananas and a few skipping rocks we'd been collecting. We followed the riverbank to its end past the Schneider's red brick house. At the end the ground was wet from the water, and we saw a dead carp -- a gold one -- that had washed up to die exposed in the wet mud. We stood a few feet from it, at the end of the river looking back toward my house over the water, pretending we were aliens and wondering what might be in those boxes down the riverbank across the grass.

After we skipped a few stones over the water, we'd decided to go on into the forest. Maybe we'd finally find the perfect location for that treehouse that every kid dreams of. Or maybe we'd just dream one up where we wanted it.

On this day we were talking of King Arthur and Merlin. We were wishing Merlin could make us into falcons. We imagined ourselves flying over the trees, looking for a mouse for our dinner. We checked out every tree, every hole, every bush around, above, below us. I even picked some yellow buttercups. Partway into the peninsula, we saw the amazing band of light shine down between the trees.

Craig took my hand and we walked slowly toward the lighted meadow. Nothing special or different was there. Only the light had made it special. We ate our bananas and watched as we sat under a nearby tree.

It was a young adult novel. It was sacred. It was 12-year-old romantic. I'll never tell whether that was time he kissed me.

--me strauss Letting me be

Breathing Lessons

2007-02-28T00:04:00.000-06:00

Today I stuck my small journal in my back pocket; tied my sneakers; and slowly, serenely slow, I slid into my jacket. My work, my things could wait. I needed to know the feel of the planet beneath my feet. Today is different. Everywhere I go it's with me. Life is a road I walk to wherever I want to be. Where I want to be is here with me. I see every bit of life around me. I breathe.

Breath with me. Breathe with me. Celebrate.

I'm on road and, time is life, love, forever.

The trees can hear the musical voices singing in my head. They are in my head too, but my feet are moving, over each other in happy step, glad to be inside my shoes and outide in the world. My heart is hanging out, bouncing with heavenly things tapping their way around the keys. This love, life is dancing down my road with me.

Breate with me. Come on and breathe this life, this love, this joy. We don't need a reason, except to be. The sun feels warm. The breeze feels fee. Time has no wish to own me . . . or you.

It is green as the leaves. It's blue as the sky. It's as wide a heart can open.
Celegrate and breathe. Because everywhere we go., life is there.

Today is different, and so are we. Breathe with me. Dance down my road a few 1000 feet. Celebrate. Breathe with me.

It's a miracle with trying

Breathe with me.

Life is love.

Today is different.

Everywhere I go it's with me.

Life is a road to where I want to be. Wherever I want to be is here with me.

I see every bit of life around me, the trees, the sky, myself, you. I breathe.

Breathe

with

me.

--me strauss Letting me be

Leaving Tracks in the Sand

2007-02-27T00:10:00.000-06:00

On a Sunday, we would pack ourselves up and climb into the car together. It was three of us who needed airing out. He'd drive. I'd take shot gun. She'd sit in the back. staring out the window. It was like a movie to her -- a visual feast, refueling for her eyes.

He and I would talk relentlessly on our 3 or 4 hour drive. We would snack on our words as if they were treats of candy, as if the view through the windshield were a moving picture, and we were two kids who had no reason to give it our attention.

Her silence in the back seat, staring out the window was her rest for the week. It also was like a movie to her -- a visual feast, refueling for her eyes. Our noise and chatter let her know she wasn't alone. She had brought home along with her.

When we arrived in the destination town, we would go to the beach before the restaurant. Then it was my turn to find the space where I was one. I'd saunter out to the sand along the shore where the birds had been at sunrise. He and she would stay at streetside. I'd walk the sand, pushing my feet into it, feeling it give back to me.

And as I did I made tracks in the sand in between those that looked something like this ->-.
And I would think, It's okay to be a rare bird, leaving tracks in the sand.

--me strauss Letting me be

Not Clueless Anymore

2007-02-26T00:04:00.000-06:00

When I was in college, we had a saying, a sweet and careful tease, "What color IS the sky in your world?" We gave to gave to each other when someone said something that was cluelessly off course. We'd laugh and smile and often get answer. Purple, green, and gold were popular.

At each answer I gave or got, I would imagine a world with a sky that color. The image was always clear and filled with wonder. It was a breath. It was a breeze. a hug with friends around me. , It was a fleeting pleasure. How could I know how refreshing, how refueling, how fun it was? I didn't know because . . .

Because back then I only thought a young person's thoughts.

Then awake at sunrise, I saw the color of a boy's eyes. We would still be up and talking, greeting morning as an ending. It was feeling the longing of trying to pack another second into the swiftly, sliding, waning minutes that would see him gone. The sky was blue by then.

Now I see the sunrise from a black beginning. It's a wholesome, open , spacious feeling. Every color fades in for me to savor one-by-one. Life is the flavor of coffee. Work is the ideas stretching out into the day that lays itself out on the lake before me. It's a glory and a stroke of genius every morning.

What color is the sky in my world? is not a clueless question anymore.

--me strauss Letting me be

In Just a Minute

2007-02-25T00:15:00.000-06:00

In just a minute, I will look out the window to see the sky, above a lake that goes on forever. In just a minute . . . in one more minute, I will take a look at something that people could never make or imagine in their wildest dreams.

There it waits for me over my shoulder. I can hear it in the silence of my mind stretching, breathing. I can feel in the space between my fingers as I type this line that I am thinking. In just a minute, I will be back inside me . . . and again outside my window, dreaming as I did when I was just a kid saying to my mom I would go to bed, "in just a minute."

In just one more minute, I will be.

I will be in just one minute.

--me strauss Letting me be

Safe and Flying

2007-02-24T00:07:00.000-06:00

Like a flag waving in the wild breeze, I am flying. I don't worry. I don't fret. I am held to the support and yet, I can let the wind carry me -- every color that I am. Iam.

Every color that I am is floating in the wind. I am flying. Every color that I am is bouncing back again. I am flying. Were I to try to control it, I would only be fearful and falling.

I'm safe with my life. Every color that I am is vibrant and flying.

I have no beginning, no end. I am colors. I am safe. I am flying.

--me strauss Letting me be

Howl at the Moon

2007-02-23T00:03:00.001-06:00

I read the story. I felt sorry. My heart hurt. My eyes hurt. I felt bad from the inside out to think something sad had happened to you.

I walked around in a bit of a moment. My fingers frowned and couldn't find the keys to type. I heard you say that you didn't want to share the story. I heard you not say that you hurt, but I hurt for you. All of the brave and the vulnerable realities swelled up to look at me and they wondered if I knew what to be on about, when a friend lost a friend that he cared about.

We only get a few who understand us and love us the way that we come, packed and broken, with tears at the seams. It's a bittersweet melancholy that takes one of them off to be waiting for us to follow. Can we follow? I'm feeling lost and slow and like I have not learned to sing. That's not right. It was your loss, not mine.

Oh where are the stars when a boy needs walk through the snow at night? I need to go even if only in my mind. Sometimes a hand to hold is a sparkling light, that can reignite and warm a heart. Sometimes a thought in the cold winter night that is crisp when the rest of the world sleeps the sleep of no cares can be caught just right by a heart that is needing a thought. Sometimes it can be delivered like a kiss on the air.

How is it I come to stand at my ice covered window? How does the past, the present, the future so call to me? What words do I have to answer the yearning, the question, the wondering about the wellness of every one that I love?

Left alone thinking on a winter night. I read the story again. I hear you talk through all of the math that really said. Don't look. Don't listen too hard, please. You might see. You might hear.

That's why I'm sorry. That's how I finally understand why dogs howl at the moon.

All of my brave and vulnerable howls at the moon, tonight.

--me strauss Leting me be

25 Words: The Gold Grass

2007-02-22T00:04:00.000-06:00

If I could turn snow into
a golden field under
a steel blue sky of wonder
I'd revel in color and
breathe in its beauty.

--me strauss Letting me be

Eyes that Want To See the Silent Snow

2007-02-21T00:07:00.000-06:00

Silent snow. That's the first that I notice how the world is muffled by the insulation of the whiteness. The air is still and so is my mind when the snow has made the world go quiet. A winter day can almost seem appealing, no matter how cold, no matter how the temperature tells me the branches on the trees are brittle and slowly freezing. I look out my wind from the darkness and wonder Is that what it's like to get old?

I dress myself with three sweaters over my long underwear. I cannot take the cold any longer -- not that I liked it when I was a child. Now it seems to want to settle in me and stay there. Yet, I'm draw outside as if the outside is really where my inside is. I want to be part of the quiet. I open the back and walk to hear, to hear the silence. The blessed sound of air as still as before the world was born.

My feet crunch on the frozen snow. It's an affront. I stop. The bright, white light hurts my light blues. I close them and hear a lovely melody of the softest tones. It rolls and ranges slightly higher and my spirits sing along with it. I think of how brown eyes have more pigment and smile knowing that my blue eyes so match the scene I'm in, that I don't mind waiting a second longer. I do and then.

I open my blue eyes to take in the bluest sky of winter.

The cold and silent snow, like life, like love, can be breathtaking and painful in it's stark silent beauty. It needs patience and eyes that want to see it.

--me strauss Letting me strauss

Self Consciousness

2007-02-20T00:04:00.000-06:00

We were walking through Denver airport. It was warm, almost stifling, and our pace was a healthy clip. It was my husband, my 4-year-old son, and me. My son was holding my hand. He was obviously getting steamy inside his down-filled jacket.

As we walked, I asked him, "Would you like to take off your jacket? It's pretyy hot in here. Isn't it?"

As soon as I finsihed my question. My son stopped cold in his track answered with only one word, "NO!"

I stopped, turned, looked at him with concern. "Are you sure? What's the matter with taking off your jacket?"

"Then everyone will be able to see what color my shirt is," said my painfully shy little boy.

Since that day, "seeing what color my shirt is" has been my definition of self-consciousness.

--me strauss Letting me be

In Living Color

2007-02-19T00:07:00.000-06:00

Some days it may seem that you wake in another world, that this other world, has no color. You may feel as if you have called down a winter of cold, cold weather . . . a dark gray sky of a black and white day night, that just won't come together with any color, sunshine, or light. Somehow deep in your psyche you are certain that you are stranded there, and you're just as sure that you deserve to be.

How could you possibly be in a world so foreign and unwelcoming? How could you wake one morning thinking you belong there?

I'm here to say. It just isn't true. You can leave.

All you need to do is take a deep breath, remember someone you love, and act as if you believe.

Act as if you believe the sun is shining, and suddenly you'll feel just a little bit warmer and brighter.

Act as if you believe the clouds are whitening, and you'll feel just that much lighter.

Act as if you believe that you can color the sky any color, and soon you'll start to see bits of white shining, and then pink, orange, and lavender.

Oh. then. Oh.

You won't be acting anymore. You'll be believing in living color.

--me strauss Letting me be

Yellow Gerbera

2007-02-18T00:04:00.000-06:00

She's just a little off center.

I'm just a little off center. Always have been, listing just right of where a ship should be. Or maybe it's left.

Actually, I've never stopped to pay much attention. It's hard for me. I can't quite figure out where the line is. Just when I find it, a butterfly catches me, and that line in a new direction. Like a rope, it twists and turns. Like a wanderer, I follow it 'round and 'round, over, under, and through the things that I have to do.

I don't really like standing up straight. I like leaning. I like stretching, dancing, figuring out where my brain might take when I'm not really thinking.

What I could be a big yellow flower against a blue, lavendar sky?

I have the space I need to feel every part of me. I'd have the sky to keep me company. I'd know the feeling of being without thinking. What a lovely idea that was.

It was only a little off center. Not enough to worry about.

--me strauss Letting me be

Fast

2007-02-17T00:01:00.000-06:00

Fast. life is moving fast. I know the world is turning faster than a life that I am used to and I am breathing as slowly as I can. We're working, working, working to make things happen. So quickly things go by. A blur of color is my life.

How exciting to be me right now.

It's almost scary fun.

--me strauss Letting me be

Rainbow of Clouds Inside, Above, and All Around Me

2007-02-16T00:07:00.000-06:00

Here it comes, a feeling, rolling in like clouds on a sunny blue day. It’s a lucky one. I can tell already. I can tell by the energy and the light, bright, childhood, “let’s go out and play” chemistry that seems to run through my inner being. I sit at my keyboard, thinking. Anyone could see me here. Totally and physically present. Except . . . I’m miles and a few decades away in my backyard.

My imagination is in charge of me. I’m most certainly not.

Creativity is a magic that overtakes me in a rush. It’s much like the way that it used to be when I ran down the hill of the vacant lot beside the house where I grew up. Feel the wind in my face. It’s as it’s meant feel. Feel the gravity pulling me. I’m almost flying with it, and I don’t hardly touch the ground. As I’m going all things that I pass by are simply a blur of colorful blends and splashes in my side view mirror.

Then I reach the bottom of that hill still running full out and puffing. Then I lay in the grass to savor the experience of having a brand new idea – that’s when the colors come. The idea bursts wide open., and suddenly, I fall back onto the ground, ecstatic!

I have a rainbow of amazing clouds inside, above, and all around me.

Nothing can explain the beauty of an idea being born.

−me strauss Letting me be

Facing Fear

2007-02-15T00:03:00.000-06:00

Some fears I face head on with a vengeance. I am tall. I am a wonder. I am a dragon slayer on a quest. Most of these fears are in protection of others. Somehow it’s easier to take on the risk when I risk for someone else.

I have to think about what that means.

−me strauss Letting me be

A Story of I Love You

2007-02-14T00:07:00.000-06:00

On a Saturday morning, when I was about 3 or 4 years-old, I was still sleeping, at least I think I was. It couldn't have been Saturday, because I had dancing lessons. It must been some other morning . . . . any day but Saturday.

I was tucked away in my bed. Just beyond my headboard was the doorway to my parents' room. A knocking sounded in the bedroom, a heavy man's hand on that headboard, and I heard my father's voice say, "Baby Doll, Can you hear me? Baby Doll Come on in here."

Well, I was up and into his bedroom. I jumped unto his bed, and we talked awhile. Then he sang my favorite songs. I like the "Big Rock Candy Mountain." It made me think of rock candy he bought me once so that I'd know what it was when we sang the song. I liked to sing the "Green Grass Grows All Around." We sang that one together. It lasts a very long, very long, very long time. He would make his voice way, way, way, way down low like it was in the ground.

Then, he grabbed me and held me in the biggest, tightest bear hug.

"Let me go, Daddy. Let me go!" I said, as I struggled to get free.

He laughed a jolly laugh. My mother came to see what the ruckus was.

"Mom, Mommy, help me. Help me."

"No," she said. "You got yourself into this mess. You find your way out."

"Let me go, Daddy. Let me go!" I said, as I struggled even harder. I knew it was useless.

He laughed and tickled me mercilessly.

"Let me go, Daddy. Let me go!" I begged.

"Give me three good reasons," he finally said, as he always did. Always three good reasons were his rule.

Then I knew I was about to be free.

The three good reasons were easy, and they always worked.

So I struggled just a little more.

Then I said them all in a row, reasons one, two, and three.

"I love you. I love you. I love you more than the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the mountains, and the green, green, grass that grows around tree."

He let go, and I started tickling him.

After all he deserved it -- every bit of love.

--me strauss Letting me be

White Icing

2007-02-13T00:01:00.000-06:00

I awoke to darkness. I do that most every morning. First moments, I find my way to the kitchen to start the coffee. It's an arc outward and then inward like an s-curve to my computer to wake it for a new day as well. Then I'm off the shower, while my machines get their morning routines underway. My how efficient we all are in the morning.

When I return to the kitchen the coffee is ready. I pour myself a cup and doctor it up just the way that I like it first thing in the morning. I've the whole house to myself and the world is alseep. I carry the coffee over through the outward arc and inward arc like s-curve to my desk where I begin to open windows on my computer machine.

I take long sip of my coffee. Oh, there is nothing quite so delicious so comforting as that first taste of coffee in the morning when the day is dark and the world is still asleep. Once my windows are open, I start to write answers to emails and questions that people have left me during the night. This part is easy. I don't really have to think.

Then over my shoulder comes a ray of light. Then over my shoulder comes a ray of light again. I adjust the blinds so that I can see the screen. I adjust the blinds again. I reach over and take a drink of my coffee and then I wake up to what I've been doing. I pull my cup to me and cup it inside my hands as I turn around in my swivel chair.

I slow my brain as I pull back the blinds to look out the lake that goes on and on. It is one wonderful, white expanse to the horizon. It should be blinding, or maybe boring, but it's not. Instead it's merely inspiring, stunning, and breath-takingly beautiful. Sparkling in the morning sun, the lake shows off as the city begins to wake in the morning,

It's as if I've discovered the white icing on my life.

--me strauss Letting me be

Rocks

2007-02-12T00:07:00.000-06:00

Rocks are like the mountains of childhood. You can’t move one -- a boulder. You can’t see over them. Sometimes you climb a rock and feel on top of the world. Sometimes you climb one to get away from the world and sit above it, watching as the rest of the life interacts and you’re no longer part of it.

Rock, big hard, giant immovable mountain-size monster rocks can be a place for imagining, or detaching, or just sitting. They always made me wonder how they got to be where they were.

I could sit in the sun on a huge boulder, especially one that was alone in a field far from any stone that could be spied. Did someone push it here? Did it fall from the sky or slide up from the earth? Why this rock? Why here? I would worry like a mouse with crumbs in a clear plastic wrapper of thought.

I might even think about whether other folks think about rocks.

Would anyone be thinking whether I was thinking about rocks at this moment? If someone saw me would that someone think I was thinking important thoughts or would that person know I was just thinking about, wondering, tossing about the idea of . . .rocks.

I would wonder whether that person was wondering what I was thinking. Suppose I became her. Would I still be wondering about what she was thinking and if she became me would she still be thinking about rocks?

This must be what they mean by saying I have rocks in my head.

−me strauss Letting me be