Deep sigh...

40 minutes of power left on the laptop... I am "sailing" somewhere high above the Atlantic ocean. I am hopelessly sandwiched (and I mean elbows poking deeply into my sides due to lack of space and middle seat) on this flight. It's going to be a long 7 hours. There is a flight attendant who is living in mortal fear that something will slip off of the tray tables, and keeps saying with anxiety gripped urgency, "please make sure the lid is tightly closed on your wine bottle." Uh, like it takes me so long to drink your little wine shot that I need to put the lid on it. I am thrilled to report that I have the incredible good fortune of being seated next to the compulsive idle chatterer and currently I feel like I am on Magic Mountain at Disney due to turbulence. Another wine shot please, lid off. I hope that this blog post is not also my last will and testament. If I die all my journals go to Beth Whittington, I promised her she could have them.

Two weeks. Two short weeks.

Here was the itinerary:

We flew into Boston and spent the weekend there. We hung out with my cousin, my new friend JK and his friend Bob (who could not atop calling me Stacy, despite his best efforts), my JDG aka LR (thank you Snow Patrol) came in for an afternoon and left me irrevocably changed (by who he is, by the conversation, and by the Love that he redistributed that I so badly needed - more on that later), then to my Aunt and Uncle's to meet my cousins two new children and enjoy a perfectly familial evening.

The next day we picked up the car and headed to the Cape. The weather was terrible. It was beautiful no less. We traveled the Cape, then to Portland, ME, Provincetown, ME, Kennebunkport, ME, Hyannis Port, MA, I forget the town where the Cliff Walk is where I fell into the water, but we went there too. We ate at Street & Co in Portland and it was incredible. We tried every indie coffee shop in Maine, lots of them were really bad. We went to Bar Harbor, ME and drove all the way to the top of Cadillac Mountain in - oh I can't remember the name of the really famous park we were in... It doesn't matter anyway. It was foggy and there was no view, except at Jordan Pond where I thought of my J and I also got a great fog shot of a guy in a fishing boat (reference Blip.)

4th of July - Boston. On the Charles. Neil Diamond, who offered the Red Sox fans a drunken encore version of Sweet Caroline complete with a creepier version of "hand touching hand" which was sung the last time as, "hand, touching warm." I for sure just threw up in my mouth a little bit. No. Seriously. Sick. Please stop Neil. It's SO inappropriate.

I was shocked when the fireworks started that we were positioned directly in front of the firework barge and my uncontainable excitement proved both exhilarating and wildly entertaining to the company I kept... though seemingly not nearly as much as my enthusiastic rendition of the American Anthem Medley. Please keep in mind that the last two 4th of July's I have spent grilling burgers on an electric grill in my flat. It was magical, perfect and every lovely adjective that is appropriate.

The 5th I went to CFCF for worship and loved singing in English and seeing old friends. We went to my first Red Sox game, where Jess and I giggled recalling the new version of Sweet Caroline whose terrible inappropriateness will be burned forever in our minds. Then Harvard, then dinner with JK, then a hunt for Shiner - a fruitless search no less.

The 6th we checked in for our NYC flight, only to find out it was on the 5th. So we bought new tickets, hopped on the 7am flight and spent the day with my family and SBodie going back and forth between the upper and lower East side. We went to a bar that is housed conspicuously in a hot dog joint, you go into a phone booth pick up the phone and dial the number and the wall opens up. FANTASTIC. I needed to pick my wallet up at JDG aka LR's - did I mention I had left it in his bag when he came to Boston? No? Well I did. So we went over and I got to see S, meet the roommate and the Laura. I felt informed. Unfortunately JDG aka LR was in Alabama tending to family business, strange to be sitting in the middle of his world in his absence. Nice to get my wallet and a picture of his l.e.side life and people. Incredible to see S, waned to hug him for eternity. I've been feeling that a lot lately.

We checked our flights and definitely did not get the wrong day on our flight to Bermuda. Bermuda was incredible as far as views and potential to relax go and will have to get it's own personal post.

It rained the first two days. The third day the sun came. I read Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, I listened to all the new music that JK gave me and fell in love with Right as Rain by Quebec Antique and About Today by the National (also the name of a bar we went to on the l.e.side in NYC.) I thought a lot about my future and what the last 2.5 years have held. I thought a lot about how and why I cried so hard when JDG aka LR got on the bus back to NY and how good it was to be with people that I have history with. I thought about why it was so hard to travel with M and how I have been having the same fights with him that I have with PDN and thought, maybe it's me and not them. I decided I need counseling - more intense counseling, and I also felt gripped with the fear that I will spend the rest of my life alone and find myself feeding the pigeons outside of Grand Central Station at 80 and singing random songs about rain. I wrestled with myself and talked to God and tried to remember my dreams anew.

I realized a few things about myself. One is always said I wasn't sure if I wanted to get married or have a family. The truth is, I do. My fear is simply that I will trick someone into marrying me and then they will hate me. Why? Because I see two really terrible patterns in myself. I want desperately to by sane. I want to be logical and wise... but I am not. I know all the right answers but I CANNOT get myself - will, soul, emotions to line up with what I know assuredly is right. So I say the right thing, I think the right thing, but for the most part my emotions are buckling and betraying me at every turn. The second is that I have an incredible capacity to make the people I know feel judged and criticized. I cannot think of any worse condition to put a man or children permanately in. Mercy.

But I long to be loved. I long to go to the places I've been and share the musings of my soul with someone other than the gentle prayers or songs of praise that I utter along the way. So there's that. I have a renewed zeal to say what I mean.

The second thing. I want to write. I want to be good at it. I want to write things that are relevant and tell the untold stories of the unrepresented in the world. I want to take pictures that tell the stories words cannot. I want to write childrens stories and I want to travel. I want to hold the unloved in my arms. I want to paint in color pictures of the atrocities that that the leaders of the free world present to us in black and white. I want to put feet to this dormant passion in me. I want to love and be loved and I want to do it as a whole person.

I need some really good counseling. I need to ask myself some hard questions. I need to stop and re-evaluate. I need to let myself be loved. I need to take more risks. I need to enjoy simplicity and reject complexity. I need more time with my friends. I need to talk less and listen more. I need to find efficiency to my expression and I need to let some things go unsaid. I need to allow my creativity to be uninhibited and I need to care less what the people around me think. I need to tell the stories in my heart. I need to run more consistently. I need to remember to call people to the impossible.

I've been thinking about school. For journalism. I've been thinking about how much I have stopped being honest with myself, with my friends and with God. I am off balance, and it is no ones fault but my own. I live a webby life and I need more authenticity and less self protection. I am losing myself.

JDG aka LR came to Boston. For soup and beer. I was shivering. I was fragile. I was honest. So was he. I wanted to drink him it was so good to see him (and not just because he is better looking every time I see him - UGH men... time is SO much better to them.) My soul found life. I remembered myself. I remembered my childlike self. I was not afraid to be me. He was as he always is (only better... always somehow better) and that led me to Him. He threw me a life raft, and I held on to it until I found myself safe at Harbor. I always try to stay there, before Him, I live there. But as JDG aka LR whom I respect, admire, and lets be honest, adore, looked at me with love as I shared my dirty soul - I remembered that the eyes of Love are unconditional and reach always to me. Risk love. Risk love. Risk love. Where is that girl? Where did she go? She broke somewhere around month 6 here. The one who wanted to love like it was never going to hurt and then got punched... when it hurt I gave up and hid, but I am back and my hibernation left me pale, but not dead and I am remembering what makes me alive. And I am remembering that without Life in me I have nothing to give the ones in need around me. I left that time somehow renewed in a way that I haven't ever been and emboldened to head back Home with vicious honesty, reminded that I will only find Truth and the utlimate safe place. I walked away from South Station feeling thankful in a way that is ineffable.

We left Bermuda, and I felt both invigorated and exhausted. I was/am also a very unnatural shade of tan. It's a strange color, that no human should be. And certainly is not a color that a human should be after one day in the sun. Not lying, people stare openly.

We flew quickly through New York, with regret that our time there was so short and me with the sense that I will be back sooner than later. I sense I will be back sooner than later, and I will take long walks with SBodie and see MOMA with my N, and have wine with JDG aka LR. And I will not rush. I will run in Central Park and I will enjoy the Grey Dog and I will eat cupcakes in the falling leaves by Magnolia. I will. I must. I need to.

I am realizing that my roots are not in a place, but a Person, in community, in my family and in people. It's just who I am. I am realizing I need to roam. I need to serve the needs of the poor. For life.

And now, I fly home. Home, wherever home is. Berlin for now. But I am redefining Home and looking to Truth to reveal it to me. I am pushing myself to honesty, even if it's raw. And I am not afraid to cry. I am weak. It is not news, but fact. And it's OK.

Two weeks. What a difference they can make.

Working on a slide show of pictures. Give me a couple of hours and I'll have it posted.