It was never about the running. It’s the rhythm of running. The point where the body recognizes the pattern and takes over to drive itself forward, the mind un-clenches, and life is simply momentum for a while.

People I love were robbed yesterday.
I don’t know how to help make them feel safe again. 

My first thought is, “Come home”. 

This is the innocence of children, who will eat dog shit.
We ignore that part.

This is how we filter our desires through nostalgia. Or whichever spell book we choose – whichever guru, god.

And we never learn enough for a reckoning.

Sometime the other is the object of a different kind of desire.

But I did watch them rise from the spongy ground. I came out of the trailer to watch them – the blades of grass cutting my bare feet, and the clammy evening pinching the skin on my arms. The world was liminal. As was I.

Leaving childhood: leaving the unexamined wholeness of the world.

Maybe that’s all that is needed some days – the sliver of ginger added to the soup bones that will simmer for hours, and hours.    

My husband and I had our first date on this beach. And intended to get married here, but the roof on the chapel caved in two weeks before our ceremony. We laughed, and on our wedding day, I walked down an aisle that I had never seen before.

Maybe that was a good thing.

In bed for two days with a sinus infection. I hit the point where my whole body rebels – as restless as a shaken bottle of coke – and then there is a cascade of emotions that turn inward.

Caustic.

Something has been off for too long now.  I’m still waiting for something to settle. I can feel it there on the edge of the days. Something like a dream that is only brushing against consciousness. A lingering mood, disconnected and undefined by circumstance. The snowbells are up. And I have to remind myself that…

Yesterday I woke to the sound of a motor saw.

I am surprised by sadness.

In school we line up after recess. We sit in assigned seats. We face each other in a pleasing circle, and sometimes we hold hands. We make adjustments. Palms facing forward or backward out of habit, are silently negotiated. We are laser-cut pieces that can flip and turn: even in our rigidness we can fit so neatly into one another’s hands.

They expected the quayside to flood last night, though the wind has been still for a day now. I guess the sea has lifted itself to move out of the way of the weather somewhere else. On yesterday’s run the path was strewn with branches, but the ground was dry. There’s been no snow so…

The days are getting longer. I’m doing all I can to conjure spring – but dreading the fragmented feeling that this time of year can bring. There is a scattering of holidays to abort any sense of flow. After a day of blue skies and quiet, the night blew the lantern off the deck table….

An exit strategy. It’s a lesson learned: finally understanding the need of an exit strategy before entering. And realizing how it can be done without a struggle: it can be as simple as a gentle laying-down of the patterns. A quiet, green walking-away. This week I think someone might have played me for a fool….

Or “Why Ghosts Work so Hard to be Seen” * It is a kind of transgression – moving through the world without definition. Like ghosts. Predictability is absolute control, and we like boundaries, boxes and walls. We draw them on and around one another. Invisible lines – undeniably present. There is an insoluble tension between…

We will all disappear anyway. What’s in a name? A rose… We fragment. As will the life that once caught itself whipping around the sharp corners hanging desperately after a name – or pulling one behind, as heavy as a tire in the sand. I’ve watched them. The runners who train at the beach, pulling…

These flat days of winter are never about a loss of hope. It’s a loss of desire. These days where the edges lose shape, surfaces reflect dull surfaces and the pieces of the world are packed away bit by bit, wrapped in featureless swaddling and stacked in damp cardboard. Don’t get me wrong – there…