One, None, Either, Both, or Another

Sitting on a concrete wall across the street, I eat lunch and watch clouds in blue, blue sky on the side of mirrored building. It’s a moving picture in living color, a silent movie that nature and man unwittingly conspired to make. This particular plot would never turn out exactly the same, nor would the audience come together in the same way. As I look around, I think that might be a good thing for all of us.

Lost in my thoughts of clouds and my cloud of thoughts, I wonder what Joni Mitchell, who saw both sides, would say right now. I feel like Alice, on the wrong side of the looking glass. Each square offers a glimpse I can see, but not experience. Still I’m here, aren’t I?

I put my lunch in the bin and move to place on small patch of city grass under a small city tree. People walk between my glorious view and me. I don’t really mind. The movie has become a stage play, and they’re characters meant to add context and color. My, how they do.

They don’t notice me, noticing them. Except for one.

A man with shining eyes and dark hair sits in the grass a few feet from me. He readies his camera. His mind is working, seeing, playing with ideas.

I ask, “Do you think we’re more like the reflection or more like the clouds?”

He smiles and says, “We get to pick − one, none, either, both, or another − don’t we?”

I knew that he and I would be friends for life.

I picked every answer. So did he.

−me strauss Letting me be

Finding a Friend

She is a self-proclaimed, literal person. What you see is what you get and to her things need proportions that work well together. She’d spent enough time with me in the 3-D world that I was a person she cared about. I had form that was real and fully filled out.

When she came to visit the virtual version, she said that I wasn’t me.

Not me? You're kidding?

But for her it was true.

It couldn’t be real for her. She said I didn’t talk like this when we sat on her back porch on Saturday evenings drinking wine or when we shared so many Sunday afternoons at restaurant tables discussing the world, creativity, and books.

She had me there.

But . . .

Is that me more me than this me or this me more me than that? Of course not.

But . . .

We find our friends in the sweet psychic place where we meet, by the safe, silent spot where we can be who we are. We long for that, need that, and get to know them and ourselves by and through that place where we meet, that place where we are.

When that goes away, our world is twisted and shaken until we can explain where it went − even then, the loss of that safe, sweet, silent spot remains an absence, an open place we feel. It's something missing that never gets filled unless that very friend finds us again.

Because to express who we are is a gift and a mystery that needs a friend and a a safe, silent spot to find each other in. Our friends hold us, and hold us up, and hold our hands in their hearts without thinking, judging, or looking too closely. It's doing the math without acting mathematically.

She didn't find the safe, silent sharing spot with my virtual me that conversation has built into our lifelong three-dimensional friendship.

But . . .

Every word that I share is an expression of who I am.

All of my words are me −inside and out of our lovely safe silent spot.

Every friend I have sees a different lovely safe, silent spot.

Perhaps we are meant to find a friend for all of the words we need to share.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Dance Floor of My Imagination

I often dance when no one’s looking, almost anywhere.

This morning, at 4 a.m., I caught myself dancing from one room to another. I watched myself for a moment. I tracked my thinking, You’re actually good at this. You should find a way to do it more. What is that you love about it? What are you recreating?

I danced my way through my thoughts into the basement of my childhood. I found myself there when it was still an open space − before my mother made it modern and remodeled.

I was on the dance floor of my childhood imagination.

I could hear the music playing. I could feel the floor and see the diffused light coming through the small, high window. I knew the hours, the fourteen years, I spent dancing in the dusky darkness without worrying. No worries to moving, turning, reaching. My feet didn’t need my head to find a way to hear the music playing on the old record player.

I danced my tree house, my diary, the canvas on which I could paint and then repaint.

It was a forest or a field or the sky. It was the space to stretch. It was the statement I am.

It’s no wonder that I find myself still going back.

Everyone should have a dance floor in their imagination.

--me strauss Letting me be

Where the Blood Flows

Who knows what it’s like to be on the inside, deep, deep inside where the blood flows. where thoughts and feelings mix with the music and color, where the universe lives both inside and out. Are their few or many? Are there any who know how to live inside that far?

Things where the stars and cells are one work differently.

Do they know that pain doesn’t hurt there? Do they know that moonlight blue is safe as being in a mother’s womb?

No one seems to know that all things come from that deep, deep place where the cells grow. No one comprehends that the love starts with those simple cell dividing, those cells we saw in Science class, those cells that live inside our being.

If everyone understood that . . . would they see that’s what makes love so strong, so pliable, so reliably unconditional?

Is it true? No one knows me. No one sees me. Is it so that they can’t see so far inside me? Maybe some see more than I do.

I know that I don’t know me.

Yet I know the place I speak of. I live, dream, I dance, I love there.

−me strauss Letting me be