Stretch Out and Wait

Too much is happening. Two Morrissey concerts saturated with volatile emotion, dear friends visiting on the weekend--and more Morrissey, disgust with Farmer Ted, sorrow for his sweet girlfriend, confusion at work, the best observation ever!, the best students ever!, my mother's breast cancer, new medicine headaches . . . and then, there is this . . . some knot that lives deep inside me unraveled itself and released its dark burden. I felt something strange in my center, a glowy lightness that had not been there before. My friend said it was Hope.

Someone I call 'George', wants to renew our friendship. I still don't believe it. I won't believe it for a long time. Our conversation, so excited, and full, woven with concurrent patterns like a torn tapestry re-aligned for mending, feels like memory. A voice I used to know falls back into place. As if the wretched crucible of my last four years never happened, all gone but for my hard-won maturity. His voice too, has a change in timbre, his words slightly edged with scars. My natural instinct is to run while I still can. But I won't do that again. I will 'stretch out and wait' for good things.

These days, I sit in the middle of a whirlwind of emotion, plans, ringing phones, too many people, dreams, good and bad memories, email, surprises, songs, appointments, and fears. . . fears. There is no time to think, no peace to place myself in events, no analysis here: No slicing or dicing or looking for answers. No predictions, and no calculations can map what's ahead. Time now, one can only march forward and pray to make no mistakes. Blindly, I crash into life. More likely, life has crashed into me.