Answer

"Answer"
-Sarah Maclachlan

I will be the answer
At the end of the line
I will be there for you
While you take the time
In the burning of uncertainty
I will be your solid ground
I will hold the balance
If you can't look down

Cast me gently
Into morning
For the night has been unkind
Take me to a
Place so holy
That I can wash this from my mind
The memory of choosing not to fight

If it takes my whole life
I won't break, I won't bend
It will all be worth it
Worth it in the end
'Cause I can only tell you what I know
That I need you in my life
When the stars have all burned out
You'll still be burning so bright

Cast me gently
Into morning
For the night has been unkind

Utopia and Home

A friend (Lauren) is doing a project in which she is collecting people's personal definitions of utopia and home. Here's is what I passed on to her:

Utopia - an impossible dream worth chasing.

Home - (A bit of freewriting on this subject a year or so old) -
It was good to be home. It felt great to be going somewhere with you: to be together with a single destination in mind. It wouldn't matter where we went or where stopped along the way... You were the one I wanted by me when I wanted to get away from everyone else, and when I couldn't bear to be alone.

Missing.

A bit of free-writing:

It takes hold of me most often as my days close down and I begin the long walk home. I do most of my best thinking while walking, at least about these sorts of things.

Perhaps it's just the Fall, although it's been there before in the summertime, but not as strong. A context with less interference: Ithaca in Autumn at sunset, and the beauty of it runs me down very quickly.

It fails to take hold when there are people around me, but when they go it takes me back... to the point where I no longer seek to surround myself with other people, least of all people who don't feel like home. I guess that's what it like, I feel like I'm locked out of home with curtains drawn. There are people inside, but they can't hear me, and they don't have a sense that I am missing, and try as I might I can't open the door or find my way back. It's not my home anymore perhaps... but it's all I ever had.

I feel like I've found a secret beautiful place, one that no one else can see or feel the way I do. I sit and see, smell, and feel a windy field of flowers... and it takes me over like falling in love. But to turn around and tell someone would only incur them reminding me that no... those were weeds, and the wind is not worth breathing in... pollution and all, the facts of life. Logic is logic, so of course they are right. What does it matter? "Come inside" they say, and they care when they pull me out of my little world. So I sit with them in their own heads, lives and homes... but I am still missing where I feel I should be. I'm still locked out, and no other place is worth living in... regardless of what is true, that is how I feel.

I was happy, although maybe happy wasn't the right word. It was stressful, but that wasn't the journey's fault. It had to be hard to reach my destination. I liked where I was going, I liked who I was traveling with, terrain, and minor consequences didn't matter as long as I stayed on the path. But I lost the path... or it lost me. And so I made a new one, and became new myself. We are all the sum of our journeys. And on this new path, my destination was more solid and terrain easier. To top it off, I became more accustomed to the road... alone.I am happy with my identity to an extent which I haven't been in a long time, but it is lonely in my new head, at least it is very much in Ithaca in Autumn.

There is a lot that I miss...