"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in you."
-Rilke

So now that my life feels like ME again, now that I feel I am IN my life and not waiting for my life to happen like I was up in Dilworth where everyone had those shiny white rocks in their gardens and there were no leaves that changed color and no water lapping at the shore, where people washed their cars every Saturday... now that I am here with the roses blooming in the back alley, and neighbors who talk to each other in their pyjammas and birds on the fence, I wonder: What was that whole last year about?

I have, in the past 5 years or so, come to believe in the abundance of the universe. I've let go of the idea that God is cheap and withholding, and I've come to believe that I always always always have everything that I need. It might not be what I THINK I need at the time, or what I WISH I had, but when I break it all down, I realize that I DO have everything I need right that minute and most of my fears are based on worrying that I won't have enough down the road. But when down the road eventually does come, the same rule applies: I always, always have enough.

But last year, it sure didn't feel like it.

I was sick and my body hurt and I was terribly lonely with no clear way of escape. I felt poor and achy and miserable and couldn't write and couldn't run and it was, I would have to say, the worst year of my life.
What's more, it wasn't necessarily the circumstances that made it bad; it was the complete and utter absence of any sense of purpose in it all.

But now. The move here (among other things) has created a shift. And although I spend most of my time now writing and riding my bike and feeling grateful for the roses and the water shining through the trees and the slow walk to the beach and the coffee shop down the street that sells the best chai tea I've ever had, I have been wondering what the point of all that misery was.

Then the other day, I was on my usual morning run. And if I've learned anything from running, it's that if you get out and do it even when you don't feel like it, you are always glad you did. And I've learned that you can't LOOK for something to happen, because if you do, you miss what IS happening.

So the other day, I began again, and I let go and I tried to see what WAS happening, and what was happening was the maples were blowing around a little and there were a few crows in the sky and the really tall bright brown-eyed Susans were blooming and swaying in peoples' gardens along Abott. And I crossed over a small bridge and went under a tunnel, and then, out of the blue, I KNEW.

And what I knew was this:
Sometimes you go through tunnels in life too. And you might get scared thinking the darkeness is going to last forever and you will never see the sun again. You might turn around and go back. You might think you can't go on, so you stop and stay right there in the dark forever. But what you don't know is that if you just keep going, you will be out in the sun again. And the darkness, the tunnel, was just a passage to a new place. And you had to go through it to get to that new place.

So I felt like that was my answer. It was just a tunnel, Kim. Don't make a big deal out of it. Don't try to make it more than it was. It was just a passage. And a little time in the dark to make you grateful for the sunlight on your face.

***

I'm feeling a little blue, as they say. Some dear friends from Winnipeg have just left for home, and I have this little ache left over.

On Wednesday night, a bunch of us got together to eat food and sit around on a little deck overlooking an orchard. It was nothing out of the ordinary. Just things barbequed and casual conversation, some kids who were a little bit noisy, and a baby (mine) who kept knocking big jars onto her head.

Over the years, I've learned that it is not necessarily the extraordinary things that bind people together, but rather little things over and over and over, like beads threaded onto a piece of string, until they become something unmistakable.

When I got home, I thought about the bit of history we have with them. I thought about the time I locked myself out of the house at 7 in the morning in my red satin pyjammas and bare feet, and Rik drove the car over so I could drive downtown and get Craig's keys and let myself back in. I thought about all the bad movies we have watched together, which I have mostly forgotten except for something about Richard Geere being a gynecologist??? I thought about all the Thanksgiving dinners we spent together and our final farewell party at their house, which was supposed to be a potluck dinner, but mostly everyone brought the apple pies that were on sale at Safeway for $2.50 and so all we ate was apple pie and a small, sad looking casserole.

Sitting in my kitchen, I was left with the bittersweetness of seeing them and then saying goodbye again for another few years, and I thought of a line I read once by Brian Andreas:

"There are things you do because they
feel right & they may make no sense
& they may make no money and it may
be the real reason we are here: to love
each other and to eat each other’s cooking
and say it was good."

This morning I woke at 5 am unable to sleep. I got up and made some tea and sat out on the deck for awhile. Yesterday was hot, almost unbearably hot, and all night I slept fitfully, tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable. This morning though, opening the door, I found that it had cooled off outside, that I actually needed a light sweater, and I sat writing for a while at the little table while tiny soft pink clouds scattered up in the sky and the first birds started to sing.

Yesterday was a good day. A perfect summer day. A day of going to the beach, of swimming in cold water, of meeting friends, then back here for a barbeque and drinks and long talks. My dear friends Rik & Zara are here for a few days. Rik and I have toured together a bit, and he is a little more experienced in the whole music biz than me.

I told him I'd like to overcome my constant up & down rollercoaster relationship with my music. How I go so quickly from "I'm going to go for it!" to "What's the point?", back and forth, back and forth. I told him how most days, I just want to sit and play my guitar and write songs and sing and not have to worry about all the other crazy stuff, like promotion and applications and trying to describe who you are in a 3-line bio. That stuff can feel so limiting and distorted, like a house of mirrors at the carnival. You go in there, and everything is crooked and misshapen. It messes with your head. You can forget who you are and what you're really about in there, and I wish I never ever had to go in.

Rik said something that really helped. He said: "You want to sing songs & be a songwriter? Great. No rules. You can do whatever you want. Sky's the limit. But you want those songs to get on the radio, you want to play festivals & sell albums? Lots of rules. You have to know that there's a difference."

For me, it helps to separate these 2 things. It helps untangle ME from the whole struggle. It reminds me that I never have to doubt who I am. I am a songwriter and a singer and an artist and have been since the beginning of time. I have a gazillion memories of walking up in the hills as a kid and making up stories in my head, songs that made no sense at all. There is a line of a Mary Oliver poem I read last week that goes:

"It is what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over & over in joy."

And when I read that line, I thought of those days up in the hills, and I thought of running by the lake when the wind has picked up and all the maples are blowing wildly and noisily. And I thought of me & my guitar.


***

Today there are so many headlines, headlines everywhere about tsunamis and terrorist attacks, and of course the bird flu... There are just too many things to worry about. I can't keep track of them all. As for me, I will be running down by the water letting the wind carry my troubled heart for awhile...

It was a morning of napping , then a slow afternoon reading Annie Dillard, then a walk down the street to get a Chai tea before becoming trapped in my third downpour this week... the first was on a run, the second was followed by enormous hailstones that had me standing for a rediculously long time in my vegetable garden under a pathetically small umbrella in the hopes of saving the tomatoes. Today's storm stranded me & my 10 month old under a walnut tree while we watched it fall in torrents all around us, watched the roads turn black, then turn to rivers, while cars passed by, their passengers laughing, or sending looks of sympathy. We stood there and watched the rain fall and fall and fall, with no sign of subsiding until we finally ran for home, me in my long black skirt (that thing keeps gettting me into trouble) which, by the end, was like lugging a sack of potatoes around, and my flip-flops. I ran home, laughing, dripping, laughing, dripping. I might as well have gone swimming with all my clothes on.

Afterward, we sat on the front steps listening to the thunder & watched a spider eat another spider in a web beside the rose bushes.

I love Sundays.

So they found my bike.

The downtown bike patrol guys discovered it abandoned in a creek bed a few blocks from my house. The chain was all tangled when they found it, so it must have come off on-route and whoever had taken it decided to ditch the bike rather than fix it. When they told me this, I imagined angels catching their wings in the chain.

All hail the bike patrol guys. They even fixed the chain for me. There is still kindness left in the world.

After I retrieved my bike from the station, I went and rode past the water, stopped at the waterwalk and read my new favorite book about Italy while whispy pink clouds sat still like painted brushstrokes on the soft blue sky. It was so quiet except for the lapping of the waves, and I thought: I love you little green bike. You will carry me to many beautiful places this summer. Never ever leave me again. And I will always always take care of you.

My bike has taken on a rather personal quality since the near-loss. I have caught myself referring to it as a "She", have noticed myself wafting kind thoughts of affection her way as if she were now a child of mine, or a soft, furry cat who curls up on my lap before bed.

The days have been hot, almost too hot, and sometime between 4 & 7 o'clock in the evening, I find myself down at the lake, wading into cold water, soft sand on my toes and I notice for a minute such a perfect perfect happiness inside me that I want to freeze the world just like this for a little while, hold my breath, and say: Nobody move.

Tonight there are pink clouds striping the sky again, the color of cotton candy the year I rode the Gravitron for the first time when I was 12 and puked up florescent pink all over the pavement afterwards.

So it occurs to me that I should really be out there, watching those clouds before they are gone gone gone forever...