i love the thought...

smell that air

i dipped my feet into New Jersey water for the first time this season. it is dirty and murky, but it fills me with an absurd child-like fever. i sat on a bench on the boardwalk of Asbury Park as Memorial Day tourists and locals strolled and ate and swam and strolled and spent their money and strolled. i caught myself feeling something in between a tourist and a local i suppose.

and i miss NJ most of all when i smell its salty air.

this weekend seemed like a vacation for me… but a vacation to a place that has already given me so many memories. it is strange. how can something be simultaneously nostalgic and new?

i walked hand in hand with someone i knew 14 years ago. and sometimes i cannot stop smiling and laughing over the “remember whens…” even when i do not remember. sometimes i am grateful that my memory is not as strong as it used to be…

everything must have a beginning…

finally, “things” are settling for me… or possibly they are not, and i am just getting accustomed to new “things.” it is easy to define and feel a beginning when the life that you were so comfortable with and so comfortable in has jolted… not recklessly, but abruptly nonetheless. transitional periods are always filled with confusion and excitement, which battle against one another inside of your head… or at least inside of my head. but “things” are settling.

whenever i find myself feeling another beginning, i start a new journal titling them in such ways… “my story begins” or “to begin again” and even “oh no, not again.” and not quite one month ago, on my first day in my new apartment, i realized that “everything begins on the floor.” both literally and figuratively speaking.

no desk or chairs or tables or furniture at all really has left me time and again beginning a new chapter of my life with a notebook and a pen on the floor of a foreign room that will in good time become my home. and “things” are built from the bottom up.

read “things” as life, i suppose.

so i find myself writing really bad poetry lately… like when i was a child. the inspirations are the same, but the words are so different. or maybe the inspirations have shifted and the words are the same? or possibly it is only the feeling that is different. i am still young, but have aged more than i chose to… more than i choose to, still now. i watch the names of people i know, or the names of people i once knew come in and out, or off, of the screen. and i wonder why i do not say hello? are they too busy with life, am i too busy trying to avoid life? it is strange.

i once wrote a poem for a man, and i left it in his painting studio. it was years ago, maybe seven… or eight? it was on a square piece of paper and i wrote later about how i believed he would find it. i was young, i am still young.

i am not a poet, but a dear friend of mine is. he has a way with words that i will never have. but i have my own way with words, and this is one bond that i will never abandon.

Anonymous asked: I just happened across your Dec 4 posting. I am Anabelle's grandmother. Please touch her next time you see her. That is a sensation she can know.We love you for your good heart and your willingness to help. Come say hello on the Anabelle's Wish Facebook page please. She will be 2 in May!

Thank you so much for your kind words. It really meant a great deal to me to participate in the fundraiser/craft show for Anabelle’s Wish last December. I hope to be able to come to future events and shake little Anabelle’s hand.

I have a love-hate relationship with the heat. In theory, I love the warmth of the sun browning my skin. When I was younger, I remember playing barefoot on the hot pavement of the suburban streets where I grew up… and spending many summer weekends with my grandparents at the campgrounds- swimming in the lake and just running around the dirt “roads,” loving the summer weather.

Yesterday it was 80 degrees in my house in Philadelphia. 80 degrees is a perfect temperature… in my mind at least. But the MS that haunts me has other ideas about the heat. It expresses these ideas to me in a very clear and frustrating way… on my six block walk to a coffee shop to meet a friend yesterday, I had to stop and “rest” twice. My legs grow tired more quickly in the heat and my eyes sometimes still blur. By the time I arrived at the coffee shop, I had to scramble to sit down before I was even able to order myself a cold tea at the counter.

When the sun is out and the temperature is warm, everything in this city comes alive. People are out and about healing themselves from their winter depressions. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a fan of the winter either, but the summer can be just as depressing at times. So, I get about two or three good months a year where my body says GO! The remaining ten months… well, I write more I guess.

over the past few years i have really secluded myself socially… spending most of my time at my dining room table crafting and writing and crafting and writing… but i am now on the brink of once again living alone after about 8 years of living with others. i have lived alone before, and at least this time i will have my three cats with me!

i know that i will have to make more of an effort to leave the house… meet new friends and spend time with the friends that i do love and who are close by. i know that i have used my MS as an excuse for not going out more… it is easier to stay in- less hassle and what not. but i also know that whenever i do bring myself to go out, i always feel better… more alive.

there are times when crafting and writing are necessary, but how can i obtain the inspirations that i need if i never venture out, talk to people and just relax a little bit. staying home as much as i do is enough to drive someone mad at times. time spent alone is definitely beneficial and i love it… but becoming reclusive is not a healthy lifestyle for anyone.

that said, i am going out this afternoon… and not just for a bus ride to the post office.

i had avoided using a cane for quite some time… i am 31 years old and from an outside perspective, i look healthy and able. i am even the type to vacate my bus seat when an elderly person steps onto the bus and there are no empties.

but when i went to Seattle and Portland, i had decided to use my cane all of the time. it was nice at the airports when people saw me struggling with my bags, they offered their assistance. i wonder if that would have been the case had i not been with a cane? either way, that is beside the point…

i love my cane! my energy level has greatly increased… when i could have only walked 3 blocks, 4 blocks with much struggle and discomfort, i now feel like i can walk three times as far without my body requiring a sit down break, or my fear of a possible fall should i push myself too much. my right foot, which would typically “drop” as my body became fatigued, has not done so since i gave in to the cane. my balance has been more stable and my whole self more aware. when i used to have to give all of my attention to the simple act of walking- an task which most people take for granted- i can now look around the streets, not just to the sidewalks where my next step will be.

what i originally believed was a weakness, a true sign that i was disabled, has actually made me stronger, more able… and happier.

speak, feel, write… and again…

i was speaking to a friend on the phone the other night… well, i would like to refer to her as a friend despite only speaking with her two times over the past five years, and never meeting face to face. but she and i actually have many commonalities between us… they may stem from completely different experiences, but each of our final conclusions that we have drawn are similar enough. anyway… i was speaking with her on the phone late the other night, both of us a bit drunk off of our own choices of wine, and she said, “travel and write your memoirs.” get on a train and just travel- up and down the east coast even- stopping in various cities- new places, new eyes, new thoughts, new words… and i love the thought of this idea. but at this point in my life it will have to remain just that… a thought. after my travels to Seattle and Portland i am left with a longing… but i also find myself at yet another one of those transition periods in life. the main reason i am sitting here and writing any thing at all today is because i have not written in this blog since my return home… my friend brought this to my attention. i hate writing just to write… but sometimes doing just that becomes necessary… necessary to simultaneously calm the mind and to jump-start new thoughts… to allow the surfacing of that inner dialectic.