When the Air Is Smiling That Way

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

A Day of Silence — April 30

The Universe of Understanding

--me strauss Letting me be

Head and Heart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Golden Future

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Wish, a Hope, and an Undying Belief

I find myself in a place where I wonder how I got here.
How I wonder!
How I wonder? . . . . I wonder as I travel up one hill and down another. I wander in and out through the trees of the forest that I cannot see, feeling safe under the canopy for one moment. Then feeling in an alien landscape that I must have dreamed up when I was asleep.

What was I thinking to take on this quest?

How could I possibly have done otherwise? It is the path that my life made me for. Touching the trees, feeling the bark under my hands as brush them, me the painter, me the dancer in a noble dance, I'm on a steed in the 17th century. An adventurer is an adventurer. Without adventure what kind of life would this simple day-to-day breathing be?

All of my risk is in my thinking and my fear of prosperity. I am the source of all generosity. I intend to climb that hill and smile my way to the most magnificent future.

It will be like castle in the 17th century. I’ll be carried there up a hill and down another. How? I will wonder. I will wander.

I will carry a wish, a hope, and an undying belief with me. They are the magic of every true adventurer.

−me strauss Letting me be

Conspiring and Puzzling Out

Back flat in the grass looking up through the trees, even on a sunny afternoon, it seemed like such a secret thing to do. Flat on my back on the riverbank used to be my favorite way, half horizontal, half veritcal. Even better was when my best friend was beside me and we were talking, conspiring.

Being there, flat with the ground, we were one with the ground. It was like . . . riding the planet. We could almost feel the breeze floating over us. We could imagine the stars up above the sky, up above the leaves of the tree that hung over us, blocking everything but the smallest space, where we’d glimpse some blue or some white.

At seven or eight, our problems weren’t problems. They were scraped knees and flat tires. They were getting in trouble for being late. They were waiting for the carnival to come to town or wishing for something truly original to imagine. We would make up mysteries for each other to solve, trying our darnedest to outsmart each other. A boy and a girl, perfectly matched, can do that for hours.

That was before life required problem solving. There was nothing we couldn’t fix just by puzzling it out together.

Sometimes, if I think of being under that tree conspiring and puzzling out -- whatever is worrying me takes on a whole new perspective.

−me strauss Letting me be

Fence in the Sky

Had someone asked me, Is it possible to fence in the sky?
I would have answered, Definitely not!
But now I see that, if you're sitting where this camera was sitting,
that's exactly what someone has done.

I bet the guy who put the fence doesn't know.
But the guy who can't see the sky can't forget the fence.

--me strauss Letting me be

Walking the Tracks

This side of forbidden
But they’re so stunning
The lines and the spaces
The movement imagined
I’m on the rails
walking,
one foot in front of the other
singing
one tune after another.

Fortunes are written
On wood so rotting
In gravel rectangles
The lifetimes realized
I’m on the trail
stalking
my feet in back of another
seeing
one time before my own.

--me strauss Letting me be

White and Blue

At times I need to forsake the words. Let them sit alone. Let them be. Be instead be with me in the open spaces with the places in my head where the color and the sky are language and the nuance. See the blue and white. Only blue and white are before me. Yet there is so much possibility. So many shades of ideas offering up themselves in subtle variety. They are waves that sound like the ocean breeze, a calming voice that quiets the words that used to haunt my head.

See the blue and the white. Beauty bespoken in only two colors.

Who would have thought a rainbow could be expressed in such simplicity?

--me strauss Letting me be

When People Are Stars

I think of the stars and I think of the sky, but not always. Stars shine. They shine with such force and such deliberate light.

I’ve learned to see stars in so many places. I see stars twinkling in children’s eyes when a youngster meets someone who has a grand smile. I’ve watched stars for hours as they sparkled on snowflakes, falling past the dark, indigo sky under lights of the city. Stars glitter up to me from the sand on the beach. Stars are a part of my life if I open my eyes to see them.

On the dandelion that I blew away, little motes like stars flew through the air in a wave. In the concrete of the street by the house where I grew up, stars of light glimmer in the glass that sits in the aggregate. Stars are cookies and stars are sprinkles sundaes and cakes. The petals of flowers in a vase spread out to make stars in colors that stars don’t usually make. I draw stars on a pad of paper as I speak to a friend on the telephone.

People are stars when they shine on each other. They almost glow when they let themselves be. A cosmic sparkle that gets their eyes a twinkling and their personalities shine luminescent with the light of a cosmic glow. When people are stars, they light up the world with their wonder and beauty. When people are stars, they give off a glimmer that makes Orion jealous of their complexity. When people are stars, other people know there is nothing, not a word, not a feeling, not a thought about them to fear.

To be with a person who is a star is like looking so closely at the right cactus. When you see the starry part that a person is made of, you see how soft and attractive a person can be. People and stars are a wonder. Both can be awe-inspiring.

−me strauss Letting me be

Positive People

Surround yourself with positive people
and positive things will happen.

Surround yourself with positive people
and positive things will happen.

Surround yourself with positive people
and positive things will happen.

--me strauss Letting me be

Intentional Dancing

I could be like the feathery motes on a dandelion, easily blown away. People, who see a as free spirit, already think that’s who I am. I could be like that . . . if I wanted. But I don’t want to be.

It is not my intention to get carried away on the breeze. I shoot the breeze. I stand in the wind. I’m was never meant to let any hurricane or tornado lift and take me to anyplace where I don’t intend to go.

I intend positivity. Positive people make positive things happen. I want. I will. I want to have positive people in my life. I will have positive things happen. I intend. I mean. Intend to make my a positive life. Positive things make a life light free. I mean to fill my life with them. I see. I will. I see no reason that why I cannot be or do what I set out to be or do. I will be someone who changes the world one person at a time.

The word intention literally means stretching toward. The word aspiration means breathing toward.

I intend to aspire to bend my knee and fly higher. I intend to become more and then imagine even more.

The possibilities are as big as my heart, as unconditional as my love, as generous as the rain in a cloud burst. I see the winning in a baby’s smile a glimpse before he laughs. I know the warmth inside of an idea growing, the colors pouring, blending and mixing, the way people might.

It is intentional I will be every bit alive.
It is intentional I will be like music.
It is intentional I will be absolutely filled with wonderment.

For I aspire to breathe deeply and to stretch every fiber to lose every pain that I hide.

I will let go the anxious weight that invisibly grounds me. My feathery dandelion soul will intentionally dance through the air to the blue of the sky.

−me strauss Letting me be

No Other Color

At this time, my eyes get hungry. I start to wish on the winter moonlight. I'm wishing there because the pale yellow is the most color that nature is offering me on these cabin fever nights.

I have to remind myself . . . to lighten, to brighten. The insidious lack of color has happened minute by minute, hourly. It’s gray dimness slowly siphons my positive disposition. A tremor, a turbulence, no . . . a timbre, that’s barely heard, whines over the lake, wondering . . . where they put them, who took them . . . the blue of the sky in day, the white of clouds hanging over it, the warm yellow sun shining love in wide opening rays, and that’s just what the lake sees is missing.

I’m feeling the loss of a lot more than that.

Red, give me the red of a cardinal in a tree that is lush with green, green leaves. I don’t need scarlet or crimson. Red, real red, the genuine article. What would it take for a cardinal to come visit for few minutes, please?

Like a bird that flies, my imagination comes to my rescue with a box of nature’s crayons and a play set of finger paints in the brightest shades.

I imagine a garden like Monet painted, all splashes, and pushes, and strokes, and get all stoked up just thinking of words to describe it. Reds, and yellows, and blues, and every shade of green, green leaves. Colorful crayon colors make room for a path to walk in between. Pinks, and oranges, and whites fill up every open space that there might have been.

I am typing rainbow words. I am breathing technicolor air.

The ultimate center of this kaleidoscope of exuberance is a special flower that’s been caught in a soft, summer rain. It stands open holding on to every drop of water with a gentleness only a flower can muster for holding bits of rain.

They call it a blue flower, but it’s not. I learned my colors when I first had crayons.

I cup my hands under it, and I think Yep there’s a reason that purple flowers are my favorite. No other color fills me up quite the same.

− me strauss Letting me be

So Simple

I first saw it in college, Someone cheated his brother out of $500.00, It was so outside my comprehension. My world view had to shift. I realized my sense of family is so strong, so much a part of my fiber, some folks' actions in a family context will never compute. Though we didn't share secrets, I suddenly saw that my family was close.

In my heart, it's okay not to like my family, but it's not okay not to love them.

It seems so simple.

No expectations. Respect instead.

But I was blessed with unconditional love from my father.

I started out with more.

That has to be the difference. There is no other explaining it.

I wish I could bottle up unconditional love and show folks how it works. It's not hard to love unconditionally. In fact, it's easier. It takes less energy to forgive than to be angry or anxious. It's a gift to yourself to be generous. Compassion helps a heart relax and beat stronger.

Yet folks wander, when they could be home safe wherever they are.

It seems so simple.

It's not hard to love unconditionally.

--me strauss Letting me strauss

Losing

In the last year I experience my first encounterwot with estrangement. It's hard for me to understand how parent and child can find themselves willing to let go of a common history. Their history IS their life. Yet, they turn their backs and say they don't care. Caring is not an option.

I am confused by it, confused by how they defend themselves with their fear, by calling it anger. How can they stand so assured that the other intends harm? They work so hard to reach so far, finding that negative idea to cling to.

One would think some great trauma brought this about. Some fierce and hurtful, mean battle must have burned this house. But no. It was air. It was nothing. It was irritation, impatience misplaced expectations. Choices made not to talk pushed generosity and forgiveness out of their lexicon, turning two that I love into spoiled children who demand things with no compassion.

The quality of mercy is not strained. Just now I understand what that means.

I frown with discouragement at my inability. Even my love can't convince them how they hurt themselves, not each other, can't show how much they give up, how they rail over a breeze and fret over raindrops, when they could just change the weather.

My parents are dead -- they died when I was 26 and 30 -- it was strange to think they were gone from the planet. They never saw my son. He never met them. He's only heard stories of their gifts and their wonder.

I think on this often and my thoughts just stare sadly at two who refuse to let the other win.

The irony is that there is nothing to win, but a lifetime of history to lose.

--me strauss Letting me be

Winter Nights

On a winter night when you feel alone, when the air feels so still and so cold, listen. If you listen , listen deep with your heart, you will know why the winter air is so clear. Winter nights are special, magical, incandescent. The light from the moon on the snow sparkling in the clear, cold makes being alone a blessing. Listen and you will know.

I promise. Just listen.

The space of a winter night seems to go on forever. It reaches out seamlessly like a river. At the same time, it wraps and enfolds, so you know you’ll never fall. You know you’ll never really get old or ever have to hurt in your feelings again.

Some winter nights are made for walking the dog and listening to what your thoughts are thinking. Some winter nights are made for watching the stars hold up the sky as they are twinkling. Some winter nights are made for understanding that life is only what happens.

And some winter nights, when we’re dreaming, the sun comes a second time. It paints a splash of sunset where, a second ago, only dark was there.

Winter nights are special, magical, incandescent, but never, ever lonely.

−me strauss Letting me be

Alliteration in the Snow

One night, when I was a college freshman, a girl in my dorm made this memory.

A tall, black-haired, busty, beauty from Boca Raton saw the sparkle of snow for the very first time. She ran out, barefoot, wearing filmy baby-blue, baby-doll pajamas.

--me strauss Letting me be

Missing Me. Missing You

You thought
what you saw
was all
Was that arrogance
short-sightedness or
lack of curiosity?
Wondering
what else you've missed?

I thought
what I saw
was all
Was that arrogance
short-sightedness or
lack of curiosity?
Wondering
what else I've missed?

Missing me, Missing you.
We need to look more closely to see.

--me strauss Letting me be

Old Tree, Humbling

What is wisdom? I wonder.

Every bit of life has given me a bit of knowledge. Decisions that I once fretted, and tore paper over, whisper past me on a breeze. I don’t worry nearly as much as I once did. Have I grown more into my being? Or has my brain chemistry settled to where it always was meant to be? I walk the road that is my own and each step gets easier.

But do I know wisdom?

When I think of wisdom, I think of an old tree that has lasted by a river, through many storms and so much erosion. It knows what it means to go from a green weed to a strong healthy unbendable force holding its ground, branches spread in glory. The old tree also knows what it means to lose that stature, leaf by leaf, cell by cell, until stands frail and gnarly, with only memories of what was to replace all of the “what could bes.”

Wisdom comes with loss. Yet that gnarly tree knows. It’s learned to bend with time. It lived with nature. It let go of it’s beauty to be part of the world in which it lives. It has no reason fight the wind. It is a gentle, harmony.

Wisdom is like music. Intangible, earned through practice, and requiring a gentle giving.

What a magic feeling, how calm and how humbling, it must be to be wise.

−me strauss Letting me be.

25 Words: Push

25 words

It doesn't seem like I push,
in the end, when I'm tired,
I just keep walking.
It's me pulled, not me pushing.
I would rather be dancing.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -

--me strauss Letting me be

Like an Old Friend

Like an old friend, my pen awaits me. It never asks me why. Yet it's there where I left it, ready to take up the conversation with my next word, my next sentence. I lovely consistency it lays the ink on the page in translation of my thoughts so perfectly, so plainly.

Like an old friend, my pen doesn't need me to edit my feelings as they leave my heart and find their way down to my hand. It make not a sound, no snicker, no judgment of the words or the way I arrange them to expess my creativity, my anger, or my deepfelt need to help when help is the farthest thing from all the rools I can call to my command.

Like an old friend, my pen awaits me. I write my name and I stare at it.

It holds my secrets safe. I hold it in my hand.

--me strauss Letting me be

Space and Room

When the clouds are high and heavy, and the walls are closing in, I do okay if I have space in my emotional memory. My sense of space is part of who I am. It walks around with me. When I’m with other people, it tells me where to stand.

I feel it in my soul when circumstances take my space and leave me cramped. My breathing gets shallow. My fuse get short. My memory misfires. I have no space to offer anyone else. I’m pinned against a wall.

And when I see another who has no space left. I want to give some of my own. But it doesn’t work like that. I can only point to the sky and tell her to look. I can only remind her to breathe. I can only be here.

I can’t give her space, but I can make more room for her in my heart.

−me strauss Letting me strauss

Old Sheet Music, the Rabbit Hole, and Ruby Slippers

She called last night, sounding like old sheet music worn at the edges that the band left on bleachers and then forgot.

She laughed about how at our age, if you don’t drink a lot, a glass or two of wine can work wonders for a busy head. She said that her mind had been places over the last few weeks, not quite the places where mine goes, but strange enough places, weird places. For her that little bit was more about herself than she usually reveals in a year.

I wondered if she knew how tired she sounded. I wondered if she knew why she called.

I did.

She remarked on the tragic death that had visited her son’s close friend. She told the story of how her son was still responding. She talked about how he went into the cave and laid down on his bed. She told me she wanted to help. What I heard was how helpless she felt.

“I am worried. I am worried. I am worried,” she said. “If I say that three times, will it go away?”
“Yes, Dorothy,” I answered as softly as I could. “It will go away.”

She said something about getting some ruby shoes then.

She said she knew that the problem was one of grieving. I said I knew that too. She said that she bought a book about it for him.

“Books are good,” she said. “Books are good. "

“Yes. they are.” I said, “Maybe you bought it for you.”

“Yeah,” she acknowledged that.

Then she told me all of the weird places where her mind had gone in the past few weeks. They were to stories of our growing up. I could hear her trying to find home again, trying to know that something, something real will lasts. She asked me an extremely personal question. She said most girls know the answer to that and I realized I don't know about any of my friends.

She wondered why I hesitated when I answered. I said because I didn't like the answer. I'd change it if I could. She said you were too nice. I said I still am about things like that. I'm working on it. She told me not to that it was those things, those kind things that would get us to heaven in the end.

She never talks about heaven. But last night she did.

She also asked me to do something if she ever got hit by a bus. I took the number and promised to make the call.

I think back now of many times she said that she asked her son, “Can I come in and lay down with you?” She said you can’t pick up a 22 year old man and rock him anymore.

Aw Dorothy, this is Alice in Wonderland, we’ve known each other so well and so long. I’ve been down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, beat up, and come back again. I don’t know very much, but this I do know. You are fine. You are good. You are exactly perfect just as you are.

She called last night, sounding like old sheet music worn at the edges. I can’t tell her today what a symphony she is, because she only shares her fear every ten or so years.

But I have to believe. I have to bet my heart that she’ll look down to see the ruby shoes that she already has.

−me strauss Letting me be

When I Look at the Sky at Night

When I look at the sky at night, I don’t see the work I have to do. I don’t see my chores pressing on me. I don’t see errands that I have to run. I don’t see the people who have small minds and small hearts.

I see infinity.

I see a blue-black sky that goes on forever, goes on beyond my comprehension. I see an abyss that holds wonders of color so distant that, despite their massive heat and vibrancy, their light has still not come to where I am. My eyes stretch with my imagination to catch the smallest glimmer of a nebula, a star nursery, a galaxy. I lift my hand to touch. I lift my heart, just because one day I believe that I will see.

Imagine the big picture view of the universe. The color, the amazing variety, the power, the calm and thunder of a system that knows itself, the silence . . . all of these at once can be imagined only as a feeling. What wisdom, what wonder, what fun and joy − to see the universe like an infinite, omniscient garden.

When I look at the sky at night, I see stars and the black abyss that holds them.

I also see as much as I can imagine.

−me strauss Letting me be