Lines and People

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

An Open Book

I’ve opened many books. I’ve found many answers, many problems that shook my stature and turned my way of thinking. I’ve learned to trust the way I read the words I find on the pages. Maybe that’s why I feel that books will always be beside me, even when friends have long forgotten who I might have been for them.

I open a book. I find you. The words say that everything that matters to me is wrapped in people. You are one of the people that I’m finding in every book. It’s not hard to get to know you, you’re in all of the books I treasure.

I open a book and inside I find my heart, an open book everywhere I look.

−me strauss Letting me be

Deep, Down Inside

Fill a cup and a thimble. Aren’t they both full?

I heard that metaphor when I was so young that I did what a child would do. I thought of the cup as a grown-up and the thimble as a child. Now that I am a grown-up, and I reflect on that I think I had the metaphor backwards. I think the child is the cup and the adult is the thimble.

We start out connected to all of our feelings. We discover what it’s like to move . . . to walk, to run, to jump . . . to be picked up and spun around with laughter. We learn about how our hands and feet work, what makes tears come, and how we feel after someone who loves us gives us a hug. As children we know why the world needs people to be fair and keep their promises. We know why being nice and being honest somehow makes the sun shine. And when we talk of such things we use words like, “deep down inside.”

A person would have to walk days and thousands of miles to find a child who is arrogant and shallow.

Along the way of our growing up things we face things that lead us to protect ourselves. Slowly that open heart learns new rules about how to respond and react with other people. Some of us close the basement door and forget that “deep down inside” was ever there. As time passes we close more doors until we’re living only on the ground level, no deeper.

If we’re lucky when we get older we learn how to reverse the process.

I want to see how far “deep, down inside” gets.

−me strauss Letting me be

Blue Skies

Walking around with my head in the clouds − I’ve heard that said about me. Wandering aimlessly looking at blue skies, isn’t such an awful way to go about things.

People respond to a smile, and those reactions feel good coming right back onto me. But the truth is that what people think is not what it seems. I don’t have my head in clouds. Oh, no, no, it’s much worse than that.

I live in a world of blue skies and sunshine. Head, heart and soul of me longs for there all of the time. Blue skies and sunshine aren’t really all I see, but I sure try to whenever I can.

I’ll grant you that some days it’s more work than I need, but pushing to find blue skies is more than a ritual or a dream. It’s a quest. The chemistry of being sad makes me not very likable, and at the end of a day. I like to like me.

Blue skies are shy things that hide out behind the gray that can hang over a not so nice day. If you go looking, know that they’re like a bashful child. They’ll pull back and wait for you to come after them. They’re in the eyes of friendly folks you know. They’re in the laughter of people you love. Give gloomy friends crayons to color away the gray. Send broken hearts flowers as they mend. Always keep chocolate, plenty of chocolate, if only in case of electrical storms.

Let people know that a blue sky can’t frighten you. Take it out, break it out for all to experience. Free that bashful, shy blue sky to play with the world a while. Don’t have your head in the clouds.

Put your heart up there next to mine.

C'mon it's easy.

−me strauss Letting me be

Today's Dance

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

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

I shall not write about my feelings.

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

−me strauss Letting me be

Colorful Windmills

Can you hear them? They’re calling me, telling me there’s a world of sunshine and colors . . . reds and yellow, and greens, and . . . blues.

Blue eyes, blue flowers, blue birds that fill bright blue skies have been waiting, waiting, waiting for me.

What am I doing inside thinking about things in shades of gray? Lavenders are sweetly whispering my name. Even the pinks, those shades I thought I didn’t like, light the sky by the corals both so patient with my thoughts. How could I not have feeling for them?

The softest prism of light is shining in past the blinds to say, “Stop. Open the windows of your mind. Let the colors blow through with the breeze.”

Colorful windmills are turning my view around to take in the whole world again.

−me strauss Letting me be