Possibility

I tend to have a hard time with perspective. The other's perspective. I tend to rewind and live in the past when I think about the perspective and I tend to look through old eyes and old sores. It's hard for me to get outside of my own head and outside of my own mind. I have never let the past dictate my heart despite all of the self sabotaging motives of my head. I have always been self aware enough to constantly revise, edit and print out the better version of myself just in time for the deadline. It is that perspective that I take with me constantly that keeps my head on straight even when I get blinded by life, if only for a little while... or blinded by the beauty that is in every person. I have slipped and been caught by this beauty before regardless of if the person with whom I am caught has been self aware enough to practice the same way of thinking, to practice the same way of perceiving them self and life. I'm not saying it is an easy way to be but it is something we all must practice daily to make sure that how we perceive life isn't through the lens of the past but through the lens of possibility.

It's taken me many a thump of my head against the wall to be rejuvenated. I often wonder how I even let someone in so close to me only 10 months after my mother died. A time when the past meant nothing but heartache and disappointment in love. Not in romantic love but in the kind of love a child is suppose to receive and the ideals I had seen around me... from classmates, and friends. It could be possible that my numb feeling I am trying to account for now is because heartache seems so natural to me. It's something I have lived and relived since the day I was born. Loss happened repeatedly. The idea that at any moment life could change in just a second and everything that I knew could be gone was ingrained from a young age. Life gave no guarantees, it didn't even seem certain that I was who they said I was. As the years unfolded small lost artifacts and information came tumbling out at my feet. It wasn't surprising most of the hard truth was kept from me, so they thought... when really it was already a pot that had been simmering on the stove for years.

A poem struck me not too long ago...
a few years ago while in class or reading a book it may have been the preface
I'm not sure but it still sits with me.

The Poem is by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

..................................

I love the almost playful tone. It is true though the art of losing, it is an art really. I don't mean losing like I lost the race... no losing... losing something. We lose time every day. Our life is always slipping away. Yet it truly is hard for some to live for the present and hope for tomorrow... knowing still that their are no guarantees. I have finally come to terms with the fact that I can only create my life so much... the rest is left for living and the excitement and wonder in how the story will unfold. It could be that my eye for beauty can see the charm in any destination, be it lonely or full of love and vigor. If I had to write a letter to myself though I before the past was even created I am not sure what I would say. I rather like who I have become and it has taken me these strained and stressful years to put the past where it belongs, in the past. It's only now that I can accept what happened to me, what I did or did not do, who I was and who I know myself to be. So for that I can understand the hesitation in the journey... the need to reflect in ones own mind, but do we busy ourselves with past times and torrid love affairs to avoid the emotional healing process? I am not sure. I can say I have been personally guilty of that at times, but I am a hands in and hands on type of healer. I work out the kinks as I go along. If I did have to write a letter to myself, the self before my mother became ill and I had so many unresolved issues of how it should have been of how it could have been, of what I should have done differently... I would say this.


Dear Larrin,

Next year you will be Ten, you will have reached the double digits and you will put both hands up to moms and say ..."mom I have finally reached the double digits" Your front tooth will be missing but it wont hurt. In June you will sit down at the kitchen table with your journal, the one with the googely eye stickers on it and mom and dad will tell you something that you have to be really strong for. You can cry its ok. Know that now is the best time you have to spend with mom before things get more grown up. She still will make you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that have a heart carved into the peanut butter and she will still cut the sandwich into butterfly shapes. Remember when things get hard how she use to hug you from behind when you would get too silly and kiss you on the cheeks. Remember how to laugh with her and remember all the nights she let you stay up late to watch Leno and Letterman. Don't stop singing even though you don't want to wake her, hum softly. Remember how she sang, soft and low and remember how you love to watch dolly parton together. Remember the mornings sitting on the porch with a piece of straw grass in your mouth how you would blow so hard on it with her to try and make a whistle. Remember watching the cows graze. Most importantly remember that she loved you. When things get more grown up remember how she loved you.
Remember that she use to tell you "anything is possible." Believe it so.

........................

memories are still coming back to me. The good ones are over taking the bad again. I just remembered things in that short piece that I had blocked out and had almost forgot about.

I feel better today than ever before, like more things are possible than I ever thought and that somewhere out there waiting on the next breeze or the gust of wind after that is the next shift and change... the next up or down and regardless of what it is, the possibility for something else
still sits in my mind and makes me smile, every day.