#example being opening an avo or cutting up cheese

[saint-in-chains]

i used to sleep with knives or scissors but then just started sleeping with a machete under my bed until i got my cat and then i stopped sleeping with anything sharp.

Its never intentional with me. I just am not... very aware I guess. I don't always know the knife is there! I do try not to these days.

[raechellekennedy]

the things i want to inhale

the sky is crying today, can’t seem to catch her breath. i think i understand how she’s feeling. my heart is trembling with thoughts of home another hemisphere away. i’m a loaded cocktail of emotion. i’m turning to the only thing i know that can help to settle my bones. set the words down, find your breath...

......

“what i know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all  have” - oprah winfrey

......

my mind is a river of words that bend and wind and resist being formed into sentences. community. forgiveness. story. truth. ubuntu. empathy. shared humanity. i smell the chives, picked from the garden, stuck in a jar of water beside me at the table. I see the mint, also cut, determined to set new roots. I planted zinnias this year because i wanted flowers and they remind me of Jules and the farm that makes up my other half of home. today they are blooming - orange and yellow and peach and pink - against the grey sky, amidst the soaking rain. across the gully there’s a rooster who loves the sound of his own crow. 

......

i was reminded today of that well-intentioned saying “what would you do if you knew you could not fail?”. which then reminded me of the question that i have come to like much more: “ what would you do even if you knew you might fail?”. i’ve come to really value the difference between the two. 

if one asks me to begin based on the certainty of success, the other asks me to begin based solely on conviction. success sounds nice, but conviction feels real. and what is “failure” anyway? is it things not turning out like I’d planned? is it a change of course? is it being forced to stop and re-imagine? is it having to let go? is failure always actually a failure? or is sometimes it permission to simply try again? or maybe still, is failure a label born from limited-vision, a bend-in-the-road moment where we can’t see what’s coming and we jump-the-gun and call it a loss when if we’d just stayed the course we would have found the most unexpected win? 

maybe sometimes failure is plain failure - mud-in-the-face, didn’t-make-the-cut, a-big-“F”-in-red-pen. maybe. but maybe sometimes it’s life giving us something different than we imagined. 

and if i only ever took a chance on an idea based on the notion of things turning out exactly like i planned, then i am surely destined for disappointment. but if i go after what i want/believe/imagine - even if the risk feels so crazy high, even if the odds are stacked against me, even though i KNOW this might not work out like i hope - but i do it because it matters SO MUCH to me, then failure doesn’t have a chance. the only way to fail would be to not try. 

right?

......

yesterday in a cafe beside the ocean i ate a cheese + avo toastie and talked with a beautiful french woman about relationships, house-building, and communication. all three are hard work, we concluded quite easily. 

a little while later a storm rolled in across the water and lightening split the sky so many times it’s amazing it’s not hanging in shreds. we turned out the lights in an upstairs office and watched the wildness through the big window while face- timing with a man on a ship in tahiti. 

afterward we drove through the rain to a pub that was packed with bodies and music, with the fuel gauge hovering on empty, and the smell of eucalyptus nearly choking our lungs. there i found good hearts, a bad pancreas, high-waisted pants, and a pair of brave girl singers. each came with a story that was worth hearing and repeating. 

sometimes i wonder if i’m wasting my days. there’s no shortage of examples of people doing the extraordinary. i feel like i’m still trying to find my way. 

or maybe i’m already on it. maybe this is my extraordinary. at least for yesterday, and maybe it’s happening right now for today. sitting here at the table under the roof that we made, looking out at the garden i planted, beside the hills that never cease to amaze. i might just let this be enough, this presence, this feeling, this paying attention. i think it’s okay. 

......

that day the boys came and we flew the kite in the field that was not-yet-full of seeds, and the sky was so big and the kite went so high and someone held the string while the other held the sail and we watched while they ran, and ran, and ran...and by the end our lungs were full of overcast air and our feet were dirty and we were all, every one of us, smiling. 

......

i want to create the world that i want to live in. i want to speak the words that form the sounds that fill the air with the things that i want to inhale. i want to move in a way that makes space not confinement. i want to see the ways our stories overlap. i want to surround myself with the truth-tellers, the seed-planters, the forgivers. i want to be willing to fail. i want to make footprints worth following. i want to step lightly. i want to shut-up and listen and not be afraid to howl. i want to be gentle and fierce, open-minded and wholehearted. i want to pull the paper off the windows and let the story be heard. i want to make my home in our togetherness, find my belonging in our greater whole. i want to show you that i am because you are, because i am, because we are.