From The Book of Alchemy….

If you really knew me, you’d know that I build Lego sets not because of the nostalgia but becuase of the symmetry. I enjoy Harry Potter. I love Lego building because I can create order. I sort through chaos and divide them into bins and color coded stacks and working through the book I arrange symmetry. I can build and see mathematics and the poetic chaos in my brain seeps into silence.

If you really knew me, you’d know that I’m fascinated by the sky. I stand on my back deck and stare at the stars. I still try to find the Pleidas even though light pollution has made them fade. I am enchanted by nebulas and suns that are named for dwarfs and giants because, even though I stopped reading and writing fantasy years ago, I am still nostalgic for those moments when magic felt real and I could escape my plebian life and transcend the mediocrity of my existence. I enjoyed Harry Potter. But I love Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn because Molly Grue was just so meh and yet she protected and cared for the last unicorn. And, in all honesty, I never really loved unicorns like I was supposed to. I always loved the pegasus.

If you really knew me, you’d know that I live within clamped oyster shells. I hide my pink vulnerable flesh and nourish my calcified spit around the pearls within me or maybe I think they are pearls but they are really just hurt or maleable emotions that I don’t want to expose to the world. Up until January, I coasted through life, being swept by the tides to the various shores I landed on. But now I am living with purpose. With intention. And I still seal my pearl tightly within me. But I’m also feeling that drive to rise to the surface and erupt into the sun.

If you really knew me, you’d know that I’m still haunted by my past mistakes, even if I didn’t actually make them or cause them or possibly didn’t even happen. At times, I shudder myself out of memories that I don’t even want to remember but they nibble at my attention and I give a glance and I’m caught and I stare at the shred of mist until it coalesces and then I see once more the action or event or whatever that I don’t want to remember but I can see it all. I can feel that burst of shame, like a big sticky pink bubble gum bubble that has popped and spread spidery webbing into my hair. I’m learning, though, to just blow at those memories and let them scatter like dandelion seeds. Let them become golden flowers and feed them to my rabbits.

If you really knew me, you’d know that as much as I love to talk (God I’m so friggin’ verbose) I love silence. I crave quiet. I yearn for those long moments when I can sit on a boulder on Black Rock Summit and stare out over the valley and just absorb bird song. I love to talk. I love to speak and hear others speak. And I love just to close my mouth and listen and observe and learn.

If you really knew me, you’d know that I love Golden Hour. I remember the first time I truly saw that glimmmering of light as it spread across a recently cut hay field. A wire fence surrounded the field and, from the forest edge, a massive buck leapt over the fence and into the field. And the golden light just streaked over the buck’s tawny hide, seemed to glisten across its pelt and melt into his long, slender legs. I can still see the arch of his body. That perfect long line. The white tail up. And then I drove past and he melted into my memory but I still see him. In that gorgeous leap with the afternoon sunlight embracing him. Lifting him up and over.

If is such an amorphous word. It lifts. It shapes and transforms. It sits in a hollowed out log and waits for its prey or its friend or its lover. If is the mismatched light bulbs in my bathroom. One is a white LED. The other is a yellowy basic bulb. Both flicker. Compliment each other. And make my eyes ache. If is the mist on my shower that I write words in while I linger in the heat. If is the astimgmatism stars that are a brilliant corona around each headlight, eath street light, each reflective sign I pass when I drive at night.

If is knowing blindness, sighted ignorance, and quiet screaming.