What a delightful day yesterday was. I was in a ridiculous amount of pain, but it didn’t halt the shared good time of visiting with an old friend. My Traveling Partner wasn’t in a great place, lacking the rest he needed, and apparently having developed a nasty sinus infection, but neither of those things threw off the great vibe. The Anxious Adventurer was welcomed and accepted and it seemed we all had a great time together, talking, laughing, listening to music, and sharing the moment. I made a delicious pasta dinner, and the Bolognese sauce was perhaps my best ever. Good times.
It’s a new day. New opportunities for connection, for adventure, for sharing the journey. My beloved Traveling Partner is getting some rest. The Author and I will head to the city to explore and talk and catch up. Making memories and looking for interesting books and having breakfast and the sorts of things we enjoy and simply can’t do, generally, due to geographical distance. Fun. I’m eager to begin. I love going out to breakfast, too, and rarely do it. It’s one of my favorite things.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. A whole day with a good friend? Sign me up! There will be time for stillness and solitude later.
I smile to myself. Short walk this morning. An icy cold and wintry walk down a frosted path sparkling under artificial light. Almost magical, but g’damned cold. Definitely time to begin again – with a bite of breakfast, a hot coffee, and conversation with a friend.
I’m sipping my coffee reflecting on love, life, and how incredibly fortunate I feel, how grateful I am, for the partnership I share with my beloved Traveling Partner. Fuck, this has been a hard year (and then some) since his injury back in – was it November? December? – of 2023. Learning to be a caregiver, not just a partner, friend, and lover, definitely showed off some of my unpreparedness in the vast world of adulting skillfully. I had (have) a lot to learn. I’m glad things are improving (every day) now. I feel relieved. Did I say already? I feel grateful. Fortunate. G’damn it could have been so much worse.
We become what we practice. Once we are adults, our quality of life is largely in our own hands. Not entirely, to be sure, because we don’t all face the same circumstances, and just keeping it real – “the playing field” is not level. No one is in this alone, but we’re each having our own experience, and there is no question that some people are dealt a far more valuable hand of cards in the game than others. So…yeah. There’s that. Beyond that, though, we each have (and make) choices. Those choices really matter. Giving up on that is an unfortunately common mistake, but it’s an easy one to make. I think about that, and times that I’ve abdicated my responsibility to myself, yielded to cynicism, bitterness, or feelings of futility, and made things so much worse than they could have been, if I had chosen differently. Worth reflecting on, but as with so many such things – the lessons we learn after-the-fact can’t help us in the moment. I breathe, exhale, and relax. Sip my coffee. Listen to the woosh of the ventilation in the office – and feel grateful. Love has made a huge difference in how I make choices, and what matters most. I would not be the woman I am without the love I share with my Traveling Partner. Grateful barely describes my feelings.
“Communion” 2010
I feel so loved. My Traveling Partner can (and does) come to me openly and talk about his feelings and his worries. I can go to him when I am feeling feelings, and share my experience and feel supported and heard. Do we have challenges? Sure. We’re human beings, being human. This love, though… g’damn, am I wrapped in love. I woke this morning feeling loved. I’ll work through the day feeling it, too. It’s reciprocal. I love this man with a love that I don’t even know how to contain. Is it reasonable, practical, or even “sane”? Hell if I know – I don’t even care about that. I just love him. He loves me back. That’s worth something in this fairly scary world of chaos, violence, and human suffering. It’s something to “come home to”. I sip my coffee thinking of the moments we shared last night, talking and connecting, and loving each other. I hope every time I’m ever annoyed or angry over something trivial or stupid that my memory will carry me back to last night, and remind me that I am loved, and that love matters most. I hope the same for him – I can be damned frustrating to deal with sometimes – I hope he always feels loved, in spite of that. I sigh quietly and smile.
Is love a journey or a destination? Or… is love a verb?
…To experience an uncompromising, enduring love for so very long is a rare thing. For me, there’s only been this one, and all other relationships and moments of affection are dim lights compared to this roaring blaze. Love is always uniquely special, as feelings go, and I can only say again how fortunate I feel, and how grateful, to experience this one. This moment, here, now, wrapped in love – and all the others that my Traveling Partner and I have shared. I hope the journey goes on “forever” (or some close approximation of that idea), it’s been a journey worth sharing with this singular human being who loves me so…
“Cherry Blossoms” 14″ x 20″ acrylic on canvas. 2011
I sit quietly, smiling. Nothing else, really, just sipping my coffee and thinking about love. Work can wait on lovers, surely…?
So much of life is about love and loving.
My Traveling Partner is more than my spouse – so much more – he is my best friend. My muse. The inspiration behind so much of my artistic work over the past 15 years. The maker of so many delightful moments, and thoughtful things I use every day. I’d be pretty fucking lost without him – and very alone.
An alternate spelling of “I love you”.
I think about writing my beloved a love note, and realize as I sit here that I sort of already have. It never feels like enough; the love we share is so huge in the experience of a single moment. lol Filled with quiet joy, and wrapped in love, I begin again.
I am lingering in this moment, waiting for a break in the rain at this favorite trailhead. Nice morning for walking, if the rain stops for a little while. The forecast suggests it will, soon.
For some time I simply sat quietly, listening to the rain, the traffic on the nearby highway, and my tinnitus. A pleasant and uncomplicated interlude, and time well-spent alone with my thoughts, just being.
I am contemplating contemplation. Thinking about vita contemplativa. Considering solitude, stillness, and self-reflection. I am pondering presence, and the idea of ichi-go ichi-e. We live such busy lives. It’s clear to me that there is more to living a “good life” than being busy. Work and “productive effort” really isn’t all there is, and I have real doubts that it is even the most important part of life… In fact, I’m fairly certain it is not. So much of what we are exists apart from the work that we do.
Work and consumption and doom-scrolling through the various feeds seeking to profit from my attention span are a relatively meaningless piece of my life. Why let these details consume my precious limited mortal lifetime? There’s so much else to experience, to enjoy, and to feel. I sit with my thoughts and my awareness of this moment. Time becomes irrelevant when I am fully present in my life, experiencing the journey, awake, aware, and really “here for it”.
I’m not busy right now. That’s intentional. I’m also not bored, nor seeking anything to become busy with. I’m okay with this quiet moment spent with my thoughts, living this moment, listening to the rain fall, and watching the slow approach of dawn.
When was the last time you took a moment to do nothing at all, but to do that very deliberately, quite aware of your experience of the moment, simply being, without agenda or impatience? Without drama or bullshit? Without occupying your attention with a screen in front of you or a device in your hand? I’m finding such experiences very worthwhile, restful, luxurious, delicious moments of freedom from the clock, “hearing myself think”.
I write a few words. I’ll sit awhile longer. The rain will stop, and I’ll lace up my boots, pick up my cane, and head down the trail eager to begin again, aware how much it matters to really experience the journey.
I’ve gone down a strange rabbit hole of self-reflection over my coffee this morning, thinking about “meaning”, “purpose”, “gratitude”, and “authenticity”. It started simply enough with the thought that I might write a few words on being positive in life, which quickly got tangled up in thoughts of how to do that… or… become that… This lead me to contemplating authenticity, and how necessary and valuable that is (in my opinion). Giving thought to how to become a more positive person (which took me quite some time and practice, myself) and the need to approach that from a place of authenticity took me further to thoughts of gratitude, practicing gratitude, and the feelings that doing so give me (which I find profoundly uplifting and positive as a practice).
…Somehow I found myself thinking of meaning, and living a meaningful life, and feeling a sense of purpose, which got me considering more deeply the nuances of both “meaning” and “purpose”…
Here I sit with my coffee, meditating on the meaning of “meaning” and the purpose of “purpose”, and the differences between them, and the places where they intersect in my life, and… how I got here in the first place. Eventually, I Googled “difference between purpose and meaning” and read a few of the results. I found myself nodding now and then, and other times disagreeing with some detail, and never quite “answering the question” – which I hadn’t framed as a question in the first place. Is this useful self-reflection? Am I considering deeply some important ideas the results of which may further my journey or light my path in some way? Am I wasting precious limited mortal time? Some combination of all of these?
I sip my coffee and think my thoughts. I’m grateful for the questions, and I’m okay with lacking clear answers. I’m content to play with the words in my head on a Thursday morning, reflecting on this human journey, and where I’ve been, and where I’m headed. I enjoy the moment, and my coffee; it’s enough. The questions linger, and I’m okay with that. Questions make good beginnings.
I’m sipping my coffee from the relative comfort of the office, having just put the finishing touches on the budget for this payday. I sigh quietly. The big gift-giving holiday of the year is behind me, now, and although the glow and warmth and merriment linger in my recollection and my sense of things, it’s definitely time to put my focus on paying the bills. We’ve got to pay for our fun, and this is a pretty solid, reliable truth of the human experience. Choose your adventure; pay the price of admission. There’s always a price to be paid. Big choices, small choices, moments of overreach, investments in a future we earnestly desire – doesn’t matter “what it’s all about”, sooner or later the bills come due. Running from it just makes the interest pile up (metaphorical or actual – things don’t get less expensive if we try to avoid paying the cost).
I sit with my osteo-arthritis pain; the bill I pay for choosing to live – and to do so without violence. That broken back that griefs me on the regular? I find it hard to feel real regret over that; I chose life, my actual own life, rather than face likely (imminent) death at the hands of my violent ex-husband. Was the price too high? Hardly. It was very much worth the price I’ve paid – and will continue to pay. Doesn’t make it less expensive.
Thankfully, most of the time the bills that come due in life are merely actual bills – the payments we have to make for some moment of fun we chose to have. This morning, I’m looking over my budget, grateful for the job that pays for the life my Traveling Partner and I are fortunate to share at this point in our lives. We’re not wealthy, and probably never will be (I don’t think it’s really a goal for either of us, honestly – we just want to enjoy “enough”), but the pantry is stocked, and we’ve got electricity, heat, running water, and highspeed internet. We’ve got books to read and a well-outfitted shop in which to make things (or fix things). We’ve got our little garden, and our life together. It’s enough. It is, in fact, the best life I’ve personally ever been so fortunate as to enjoy, and it’s definitely worth the price I pay when the bills come due. Isn’t that the important thing? That it feels worth it, I mean? That it feels like enough?
I sit with my gratitude in this quiet moment, hoping that this good time in our life together lasts a good long while. The future isn’t written and the world is full of turmoil. It’s hard to say where the future will take any of us, or how long one mortal life may last. I look over the budget one more time, and ask a question I know matters – although I don’t like to consider it; what can I do to protect my partner’s future from uncertainty if “the ultimate bill” comes due, and he’s left to go on without me? I don’t run from that thought these days – it’s too important to overlook it, and the bills always come due, eventually. That was a hard lesson to learn, but it’s an important one. So, I recommit myself to freedom from debt and building our savings; if either of us is left to deal with life alone, it’d be nice not to worry about debt. We have shared values and a shared understanding on this detail, and we plan together. It’s a partnership, for real. I smile to myself; it feels good to have a proper partner on life’s journey. More to be grateful for.
I sip my coffee. I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s a mortal life, sure, but so worth taking time to savor each precious moment. I look at the calendar – 4 more days to the near year. Already? Already. Time to begin again.
Evening Light 