linked.

so much has happened in the last eight weeks to change my perspective on what amounts to - everything. a quiet newborn baby made me cry hidden tears, remembering how joyful it is just knowing that you are alive. a trip to australia made me question the strength of my convictions, my understanding of natural selection, and fall in love with some pretty amazing people. an evening with a taciturn, sunburnt cowboy clued me in about my own sense of sexuality and loaded me down with questions about who i am and what i truly want. an afternoon spent climbing over rocks and the bones of someone else's ancestors reminded me that the sun rises and sets everywhere just the same, and i should consider myself lucky to be counted among those who have seen it.

most elemental is that i finally remembered what that feeling is, that indistinct breathless feeling that comes over me for a time nearly every day. i am grateful to be alive and living. i catch my breath because i realize at the end of the day, i have two working feet and a heart that keeps beating, and no one has the right to ask for more.

what remains after all this goodness is the pervasive sense of moving on that has smothered this life like an extra blanket. i am aware that this chapter is coming to a close. i have, honestly, things to which i am looking eagerly forward - my thesis work, graduation, a career. and things to dread, like leaving this place and these people around whom this life is built. necessity i understand. goodbye i do not. and i can feel it coming. i hope its another mistaken assumption.

so i work, and i wait. i worry about money and avoid the basement, i wear my routines like a cloak that protects me from the cold wind of uncertainty.

and i let every moment be, without rush or force. smoke a cigarette to calm me and feel the assurance of my own smooth skin covering my own strong bones that are held together with tough flesh.

flesh that wears, but never tears.