a few words on love

Today was the perfect blend of cloud and sun. Out with Little Red, getting closer each day to Old Dead Red, ten miles east, stopping, looking for roads with no traffic so I could stop short when my heart stopped and my breath left. Aperture, shutter speed, color balance, manual focus.

French toast on sourdough bread. New table, same space, good music. I look around and think, "I'm pretty sure everything in here is something I really love." I think about the habit I try to maintain of only buying things that I find wonderful, exquisite, or lovely.

I live an impractical, inefficient life. I don't think so much about dollars and cents, nor hours and minutes (mostly). Usually, my decisions are based on the amount of potential goodness. My currency typically runs somewhere between color and general beauty. I'm not a very good capitalist nor am I much of a consumer. Things are rarely just things.

I was sitting high on a mis-matched bar stool, eating eggs with my french toast, full of maple syrup, re-visiting these questions of want and ideas about dreams. I've been thinking a lot in these last few weeks about how much that which we love tells us who we are. I've been mulling over the thought that the only way to really hearing the tender cries of our burning hearts is through the voices of our desires, that which brings the most delight, the utter lavishness of our wildest, most wonderful dreams and the hope from which all of these things spring. And, on the other side of the coin, our hearts are often unburied via the deepest hurts, the realization of our broken world, and the desires that remain unmet.

The arrival of the new year, the re-cycling of seasons, has kept this contemplation at the forefront of my mind. I find myself facing down the state of my dreams. Where is my heart these days? What are my wildest dreams? What are those things that I love? And, inevitably, I find it quite necessary to remember the dreams that have led right here, to this apartment, this day, this hour. What where my dreams a year ago? Two years ago? Six years ago? Are those still my dreams, or has my heart changed?

I got in my car this afternoon and drove east. As I moved towards the open browns, the rolling hills, the expansive stretches, a vision came back that I think has gotten buried in the mundane, in the difficulties, in the landscape of this life that I could never have imagined I'd be living. But then I remembered. This dream, a quiet what-if about a house in the middle of an open field. A quiet place far from neighbors, large, open windows with the Colorado breeze blowing in. Waking to the most beautiful paintings enclosed only by window frames, changing with the seasons, hours, and sunshine. That was the life I once hoped for. I let it get lost in the middle of the city and too many exhausting jobs. My eyes have narrowed.

These last few days, I've been asking myself what it is that I really want. What is it that I am really hoping for?

I look around my small space-- all mine-- and see that in so many ways I am living the life I want. I live a life devoted to celebration, to enjoyment, to doing things that really bring true life and joy and goodness. This is the first thing I want: to live a life of love. I remember coming to an extremely influential realization at the end of 2007-- a season marking the start of what would be perhaps the hardest year of my life so far. I was paying more than imaginable for a terrible apartment, cavelike, with what seemed like a small, yet wild jungle up above and an invasion of flying ants pouring in from a hole in the wall below. It took me seven months to find a job that would last 45 days. My friend would die and I would face what seemed like an endless number of days in tears. Nevertheless-- I sat down on the couch and looked out the triple panel of windows lining the front wall of the living room and took in the sunshine filtering through tiny green leaves of the bushes out front and thought to myself, "I want to live a life of celebration." I remember sitting there, thinking, "I have no idea what it means to love, but it seems like I could start with these green bushes and their tiny leaves."

Now, three years after, I wonder sometimes if I ought to get serious about some things, if I am truly as irresponsible and silly as some people seem to think. I wonder if I ought to grow up and save a little more money for retirement and start setting for more mediocrity. And then I realize how much bullshit that is. I don't mean retirement, because I do think that is sort of important, but the mediocrity part for sure. It just isn't the life I want. So I will have a little wonderfulness in place of a lot of sort-of enough to get by without making waves or assuming too much worthiness.

What else do I want? What else is there to want than this?
I want a few good friends, I hope for someone to share my thousand dreams with.

I want to pour out the fullness of my heart in a classroom of my own-- as terrifying the vulnerability is.

I want a car that has at least enough shine left on it to show that it was probably new at some point.

I want to travel more. I used to have more dreams of this, but also let go in the midst of school work and insufficient paychecks.

I want to have clear skin again and I want opportunities to put on lovely dresses and laugh all night long.

I want to hang beautiful artwork made by someone else in my house (the old one out in the middle of a yellow field, facing the blue mountains)

and I want a comfortable place to sit where people can come and visit and we can all sit around laughing and crying and sharing life.

I want to pour my life and my heart into other people alongside someone else with the same dream.

I want to have the courage and the momentum to put my work in places that thousands of people can see it and feel my joy and maybe get a little beauty into their lives too.

I want to have the energy and space in my life to really make art with the vivacity and freedom that is billowing inside of me.

I want the patience and the courage to hang on to these dreams in the midst of this long season of wilderness and smaller joys.