I thought I would start my journal after finishing a transition to another
site, but I saw something today that seemed like a sort of sign, like a
departure sign where you meet up with others to begin an adventure,
a place to start again.
I live in a city outside of Detroit, having moved from a more rural town.
I like this new setting, quiet streets and lots of people who seem to
have interesting stories. I was driving home today and saw a Hummer,
one of those armored cars, parked on the street up from mine.
When I was in Boston, I often saw one on Boylston Street and began
a kind of dialogue with it. Better to face the world with just your skin,
I would think.You get bruised sometimes while you're entering lives and
letting their lives enter yours, but you wind up with bits of other people
woven into you forever, surely the reason for living. Some encounters
lead to instant connection, and some are not so easy, even ones with
the very same person - if it were so easy to know another person there
wouldn't be quite as much music, or half as many books. Still, sometimes
when there's caring,people risk renewed encounters, changing bruises of misunderstanding back into the blending of connected minds. Some days
when I passed it I felt pretty bloodied, or knew that I'd bruised others' skin.
I envied it's smug untouched air. And other days I felt triumphant - alive with
the feeling that comes with connection, with letting your boundaries fade.
Everything is new here. Any thing or work or person I want in my life, I will
have to approach and ask in some way or other to be let in. I think I will try
it with only my skin, with one eye on the tank up the street.
july 20
july 20
The kindness of - not really strangers. I am in debt again, a familiar
feeling from last year when I was sick and collected all those kindnesses.
I needed advice and thought to ask people who've worked in that field. I
wrote some friends whose work I admire, even though I don't know them
very well, but didn't send those notes because my questions had been
answered first, by my American friend who roams the world, his email an
anchor his feet don't seem to be, who took the time to give me good advice, and by another friend who's also roamed the world, who did me a great and touching kindness - she made my problem hers. Thank you Steven, thank youAna.
july 23
july 23
We circle Manhattan all weekend without ever really being there, like
one of those cameras in a film that circles people, observing and focusing, trying to find out what they're thinking and feeling.
A party for someone we love on one side of the river and a stop
for work for B on the other side. And all the time the New York skyline in the distance like a dream.
july 25
july 25
I like these little getaways - chances to be with people I haven't seen
for a while. A drive alone tomorrow to where K lives, and then a drive
with her back home to Massachusetts. Boston is only a place, but
I miss it as if it could breathe.
