A Master Minding It's Flowing Hand.

From inside of the coffee shop she watched his silver hair glisten in the sun as he made his way towards her. His long curls bounced with every confident step and swayed past his face as the gust of wind entered with him through the door.  He nodded to the clerk and handed over the money. She caught from the corner of her eye colors melting from the painting on top of the couch. The artist's hand flowed as freely as water-first on the canvas and now on the floor. His silver curls grew longer with every catching breathe- soon swimming freely in the ocean of paint that was flooding the shop. His gaze and attention fixated on what wasn't there- the artist.  The artist knew him before he knew her. Every change of direction her brush took mirrored the path he took from the day he was born to the one that led him into the shop. She did not have to meet him to know him, nor did she have to know him to meet him.
Leaves of red and orange and withering brown suddenly fell from the sky as if an enormous tree as tall as the sun, hovering over the clouds just gave a great shake. A chilling breeze came over the air and froze the paint very still. Very still was the air. Very still were the once flowing colors. Very still was his gaze. Very still was her's. She couldn't move for her feet were cemented to the block of frozen colors-no longer copying the air of freedom. This didn't hinder the growth of his silver hair, now curling around her ankles-still catching glitter the sun offered.
His hair crawled up her leg like a vine on the side of am old building. As it reached the nape of her neck she didn't feel suffocated- but sheltered, protected. It didn't stop growing until it covered every inch of her body. The sun shone bright as ever now, melting the frozen paint. There seemed to be an endless supply of paint melting off the canvas. The artist must of painted all that she knew and learned about him, all that he had felt his entire life on that canvas. The man with the silver hair, the clerk and the girl knew it and could watch it seep between their fingers. Soon the story told by the artist flooded the room to the ceiling. The girl's body, still wrapped in his sparking hair, swayed with the flows of the artist's emotions. The girl soon understood that the colors, curves and shading of the painting constructed so delicately by the artist told the story of his life. When the two came together, the moment he walked into the door, a combustion was bound to occur. Like an inevitable crash between a wave and the shore. His story trapped in with the confinements of a canvas was naturally let out of it's cage to meet with it's rightful master.
Flower buds sprouted from the coarse strands of his hair that held tight to her body. As they bloomed she recognized the sweet scent of the familiar flowers. She knew him. She knew him many times. In his gaze was the familiar scent of the blooming flowers, in his gaze was the chill that cemented her to the ground. The colors that melted from the canvas to every empty space around her could be found in his eyes.  The sun that gave her energy to move, breathe, live, was trapped in the strands of his hair. She knew him very well- and he knew her.
The artist, from wherever she was, smiled. She suddenly felt that somewhere, someone read and understood her strokes. There is no greater love and satisfaction than that of an understood artist. Only she knew whose story she was telling and consequently the chance of the sister and brother of the colors she chose met together in the same room.
A mastermind lives in the flowing hand of an artist if the master minds it's flowing hand. Let freedom ring.

This summer, I walked.

I walked and walked and walked. One foot constantly in front of the other. My body in a machine-like continuous forward motion, my mind not straggling far behind. The straps from my pack sinked into the knots on my shoulders- a doing of the purple and green mountain-town-thrift-store hiking back pack itself. The pack that held inside everything I needed to survive. The pack that over time became like a extra limb, as dear to me as my very arms and legs. Occasionally, I strapped on the buckle on my waist to shift the weight, which then massaged the ever-forming bruises on my hips. My discounted one-size-too-small hiking boots rubbed the raw blisters on my feet. The feet that brought me hundreds of miles across landscape untouched by man-kind. The strong feet that held my now strong legs- muscles I'd never seen before revealing itself. I could smell myself. In fact, I could smell everything around me. Having spent weeks immersed in the presence of Mother Nature had awaken all my senses.  No longer were the city's commercials ringing loudly in my head. My thoughts depended deeply on the song of the birds, the whirl of the wind, the ice-cold water flowing down a creek that would soon fill my water bottle. I could smell the wildflower's perfume dancing wildly in the air. I could see every wrinkle on a every tree, I could hear their story. I could feel the drop in temperature, the tiny crystals of ice in wind as I hiked higher up a mountain. I could feel the elevation take hold of my lungs and embrace it firmly in it's hands.
How I got here, in the home of wild animals and wild flowers and wild air,
How I ended up living days with one goal in mind- to hike and hike and hike some more until I thought I couldn't take one more step, then take a hundred more,
How I got here- was a mystery.
So often I find myself on a road I never knew existed. Yet, this time I was in the driver's seat. I brought myself here, this was my choice.
To walk, walk, walk.

I remember waking up in a sleeping bag on the hospital visitor waiting area's floor on the first morning I was the mother-less girl. My boyfriend at the time was behind me, my sister across from me, my father in the intensive care room with the body my Mother's spirit just left behind.
I banged my fist on the cold tile crying out to the gods that drove the car to this road- keeping me as their hostage in the passenger's seat. There on that floor, Reality made a raw appearance. I could no longer sanely convince myself that my mother was going to be ok. She was dead. dead. dead. dead. No matter how many times I rubbed my eyes or pinched myself, no matter how badly I needed to hear her tell me she loved me, no matter how badly I needed her hug- I couldn't get it. It didn't matter that no one else in the world knew what time I was born. It didn't matter that I wasn't done growing up. It didn't matter that my father was less like a father and more like a "friend", later becoming more like a roommate more irresponsible with money than I was with my feelings. It didn't matter that she never saw me graduate, or have a baby, or find happiness. It didn't matter. She wasn't coming back.
How did I end up here.
It seemed so obvious- every event leading up to that very moment flashed in my head. It was like Reality suddenly showed up with an arm-ful of pictures and threw them at me- each picture weighing like a brick.
The forth of July spent in the hospital bed snuggled close to my mother, cradled in her arms-the day we found out it was the pain she had was indeed cancer.
The nights she spent too wasted from chemo therapy to make dinner, or move a muscle.
The New Year's Eve she decided to shave her head to avoid the painfully slow process of hair loss.
The New Year's countdown I spent in the bathroom in tears because her bald head made it impossible to ignore her illness.
The time she held my sister and I in her arms assuring us that even though the cancer made it's way back for the second time, she was going to be alright, she was going to fight.
The bone-marrow transplant. The weeks in the tiny clean room. The smell of the lotion I rubbed on her dry feet and hands, a smell that now immediately sickens me to the stomach.
The ghastly disease that took over her beautiful skin and clean lungs.
The downward spiral that quickly followed-
      Hospital visits no longer visits but stays.
      Her thinning legs
      Her thinning physical strength
      Her repeating apology every time she woke me even though I always told her It wasn't her fault the the liquid going through the IV was going right through her.
      The morning she held her eye lids wide open asking me to help her open her eye
               the moment I realized she wasn't getting her sight back
               the moment I learned it was a fungus behind her eye leaking to her brain.
      The moment she was getting wheeled to the room for the last attempt at removing the fungus. Her face- that expression hasn't left me. She told us she loved us. She told us she would see us soon.
The warmth of her hand on my face. I placed it there as she laid in a coma so that I would always remember what that felt like- and I still do.
Her finger tapping to the music I played for her- Michael Buble, Carlos Vives, Juan Luis Guerra.
The moment she opened her eyes and she looked at me. She told me she loved me. She told me she loved me. Regardless of the horrible daughter I sometimes had been, despite my flaws, despite letting her down countless times- she loved me. The told me she loved me then slipped back into the coma.
That was the last thing she said.
That was the last thing she could say.
Her last life decision was made for her even though she had been the one to fight the hardest at keeping her life.

How did I get here. How did I become the mother-less girl.
This is what life has given me. I had no control of it, nor do I have any control of the pain it causes me even to this day.

And so I decided to walk. and walk, and walk. As if with every step I could become closer to an answer. An answer to why my mother had to die; an answer to how I was to live without her.
Every night, at the end of my hike, as I gazed over the thousand shades of purple and orange melting in the sky, gently gazing over the peaks of mountains and treetops, I searched for that answer. I asked a question that received no response. Until I learned that there was no answer.
As I walked I passed trees, mountains, flowers--nature that just is. That's the beauty of it- nature just is. Life just is.
Life doesn't decide one thing is bad and the other good. Life is only in favor of the circle, the inner system that is the reason for Night and Day. To go against that flow is to purposely swim into a whirl-pool in which only destruction can occur. The Universe will bring many joys along with many tragedies. As long as I could accept that I could have as close to an answer as is reasonably possible.

I will never stop missing my mom. I will never stop wishing she didn't die. But if there is one thing I learned, it is that when I walk and walk and walk until I feel like I can not possibly take another step, I can always take a hundred more.

     

the first snow, the first light.

Apart from not understanding your mind entirely, I fail also to see your intention. My love for you will never die, nor do I want it to. Yet, it changes with the seasons. The way I loved you in your apartment, the way I looked at you, the way I longed for you was in a different language. The way I wanted to hold you spoke in a universal language that still holds true today.

The first snow of the season fell silently last night while I paid visit to the series of thoughts that stream without my consent. I woke with a sense of urgency.

I felt a sudden wave of urgency to change my sense of direction, my perception of color, my foundation for comfort --not an attempt to escape an ill flavored taste, but rather to accordingly evolve with the sun.

The white-covered land viewed outside of the window validated Mother Nature’s decision of time for change within her biological make-up as well as my psychological one.

Much like a chameleon, my colors change to adapt to my surroundings. Today, I resemble the tree standing in the sun –summer’s active green life still bellowing underneath and fall’s vermillion pigment spreading and spilling over with winter’s white snow sprinkled like decoration.

Change is indeed at my doorstep. 

Apart from not understanding your mind, I fail to see your intention. I remember a time when the mystery of it stirred an exceptionally uneasy stew in the pit of my stomach- difficult to ponder on without being driven to frustration lightly tossed with insanity.

Today, I do not love you in the way I used to. Today, I love you in a different language. A light was switched off and a different one was switched on. What once was in the shadow of the first light is now in plain sight.

You are lovely, none-the-less.

The parts of you that are now exposed are a lovely island I don’t wish to be trapped on.

The parts of you that now live in shadows will live in the shadows of my heart –comforting me and balancing me in ways that cannot be transcribed shorthand.

I thank you for existing

I thank you for not loving me

The white slate of snow that covers the once green land mirrors the white slate of understanding that once was spoiled with the robust temptations that sided naïve emotions.

I know what I want. That, in itself, is a gift.

You are not what I want—that is the bow on top.