New Year Wisdom

Cardiff Castle by Corinne Whiting

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” | Rainer Maria Rilke

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Thankful November: Day 13

Day 13 * I am grateful for: Times when, for some unknown reason, strangers gravitate toward me…on days when I also happen to feel open and receptive to hearing their stories. Today, in the midst of some relatively short-lived bus banter coming home from downtown, a man revealed so much to me about his day that he moved himself to tears. Although I’ll never know the background as to why that one particular anecdote carried such significance and emotion for him, I felt that—for one moment—I was let in on something sacred.

And I wondered why we don’t share/bare our true selves with/to strangers more often. Vulnerability can be a beautiful thing.

“We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” ― Gwendolyn Brooks

Thankful November: Days 7, 8 & 9

Day 7 * I am thankful for: Saying yes to unexpected adventures.

Day 8 * Simple beauty.

Day 9 * Live music. Always, live music.

Building a Bank of Memories

Magical morning mist, Cowichan Bay, BC

This, I think, is what love is: taking it all in, hoping for the best. Admiring the lake’s shimmering surface and unknown depths. Building a bank of memories, and cherishing them all equally.
~Jane Smiley

A Midsummer’s Anti-Recap

People keep asking how my summer’s been, and I don’t quite know what to say. (First off, why the past tense, people? I ain’t saying adieu to this season just yet!)

Also, it’s been so much, a bit of it all; it’s been everything. There’s no tidy response. It started off with so much unspeakable sadness, and it will end with a bittersweet ache, too (my brother and sister-in-law move to the UK next week!).

But, man, in between, there’s been so much goodness. Life is so full, so multi-layered, so surprising, so rich. I pinch myself sometimes—the deep-rooted connections I’ve made, the beautiful music I get to hear, the waters I get to frequent, the fiery sunsets I get to drink in. These days, I’m just really sitting back and taking it allllll in.

“There are no simple answers in life. There is a good and bad in everyone and everything. No decision is made without consequence. No road is taken that doesn’t lead to another. What’s important is that those roads always be kept open, for there’s no telling what wonder they might lead to.”~D.J. MacHale

*Days like these, thank you*

When self-employment feels daunting and stressful and uncertain and cuckoo, will you pretty please remind of days like these? It’s been a mighty fine week.

Synchronicity

Synchronicity is all up in my grill these days, and I’m digging it. Call it hokey, woo-woo, pure coincidence, whatever…but I love this stuff. I feel “tuned in” (which, believe me, is not always the case), and I’m feeling grateful for that.

Summer in Seattle is sailing along with biergarten reunions, country music-fueled, sunset boat rides, birthday cycle saloon beer tours, “secret” shows in barn-like spaces, beach bonfire concerts, canal runs, park sits and so much more, and I currently feel optimistically open to discovering what the rest of this sunny season might bring.

Here’s hoping your summers are full of goodness so far, too:)

“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic — the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.”~Charles de Lint