Day 14:

Last year, while standing in the poetry aisle at the library seeking a new treasure to take home, I slid a book by William Stafford off the shelf and opened it to a random page, as is my habit.  I instantly fell in love with the first poem I saw. The book came home with me that day and has since been added to my own bookshelf.

The Way it Is
There's a thread you follow.  It goes among
things that change.  But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

On Friday, I spent the afternoon with my friend John, who also happens to be my colleague and the best writing and tennis partner one could ever wish for.  And he makes me laugh. We had a lively adventure wandering through bank lobbies, exploring the Portland Police Museum, and enjoying a cocktail at the Lotus Cardroom and Cafe.  It definitely rivaled the fun of our last ramble through a cemetery. We talked a lot, because that's what we do. Half the time we know what the other will say next.  On the subject of this blog, as predicted, his first comment was, "I really wanted to edit it."  I just laughed.

There will always be a piece of me that wishes the writing here was perfect, because it's in my character to reshape the things I create until they become flawless. But that's not what this has been about. This has been about daring myself not to be perfect. About letting myself just be me no matter how silly it looks. And about giving myself the time, the adventure and the space to find my thread that somehow got buried under the weight of those who wanted me to be someone else.

And now it's time to don my sassy boots and head off to the theatre.  A perfect finale.

The end.

Day 13:

To earn my right to have a bacon maple Voodoo Donut for breakfast, I started the day with a longer than usual run through the woods along the river and under the train trestle.  I'm ever hopeful that a train will come. Because when it materializes from across the river, it's so strikingly dramatic to stand right underneath that mass of power as it passes overhead. It's almost as if it becomes a part of you. Unfortunately, I'm rarely indulged. The best timing I ever had was on my bike when I got to race the train for about a quarter of a mile before it veered off. It was exhilarating. And if nothing else, the engineer and I were both highly entertained.

Today's excitement was provided by the changing woods.  For the first time this year, spring was just asking to be noticed with hopeful buds of pink and yellow on the Oregon grape and new iridescent leaves sprouting out of the undergrowth, beginning to hide the dark cover of last fall's leaves. Even the moss seemed somehow brighter. The woods inspired me to check out the happenings in my yard, and I was pleased to find masses of snowdrops, crocuses starting up here and there, and a few flowers finally popping on my fragrant winter daphne which seems very reluctant to bloom this year. I refuse to think about the weeds I saw.

My favorite garden plants are always from friends because I love thinking about the gardener who shared them with me as I watch them grow.  My snowdrops started as one tiny clump almost 20 years ago, shared by a lovely volunteer at the Portland Opera who hand-wrote thank you letters to our donors. Each week when she came in, we would spend time talking about flowers and gardens. It's a happy memory. And the really fun part of the snowdrop chain is that she received them from a friend who originally dug them from the garden of John McLoughlin, of Hudson's Bay Company fame, also known as the Father of Oregon. 

Now I'm under no illusions that McLoughlin actually planted and cared for these flowers himself -- especially since the house was moved from its original location up onto a bluff in Oregon City in the early 1900s -- but I do love the coincidental connections and intriguing stories about how things come to be under our care, at least for a time.

Day 12:

For Heidi (and the other believers):

I love wildly imaginative people and how their ideas and creations bring an extraordinary kind of magic to the world -- a necessary kind of magic that makes things brighter and more daring. Children's books are always a fruitful place to find such wonder. So I decided to take a spin through the kids section of my bookshelves today in celebration of Dr. Seuss' birthday.

I found a book called The Fish that my dad gave me in 1971.  And Put Me in the Zoo, a favorite book from my grandma's house. Make Way for Ducklings of course.  And Where the Wild Things Are.  And the Story about Ping, the beautiful young duck who lived with his mother and his father and two sisters and three brothers and eleven aunts and forty-two cousins on the wise-eyed boat on the Yangtze river. All well-loved books that have been read and enjoyed many, many times over.

But the Dr. Seuss books shine the brightest of all.  They always did. Growing up, we made a beeline for the "S" shelf at the library, crossing our fingers that they wouldn't all be checked out. You could spot them from way across the room because the books were big and the spines were more radiant than the others. And it wasn't until years later that my mom announced that she never truly appreciated reading all of those Seuss books filled with constant tongue twisters and nonsense words.  But she was the kind of mom who did it because it was a "mom" thing to do.

I remember how these books made me feel. How the Cat in the Hat shocked me with his spectacularly unruly messes. And how the Lorax made me sad as he tried in vain to save the wonderful truffula trees.  How I always wanted to know why the Grinch became so mean in the first place. And how giddy all of the preposterous creatures, places and situations made me... the Gacks and the Zeeps and the Zeds and the Zans... and the upside down inside out fishes and fans.

From today's vantage point, I can see why.  So much of Dr. Seuss' work is about believing in the fantastical.  It's about the wise children and creatures who seek it and want to experience it and the grownups who simply can't.  The sensational hullabaloo on Mulberry Street... the wondrous world deep down in McElligot's pool... the astonishing miniature community on Horton's speck of dust... and the stupendous appearance of hat after hat on Bartholomew Cubbins' head....

So splendidly bizarre.  So worth believing in.

Day 11:

Zen. I've always thought it would be fun to build a labyrinth in our backyard. But the swings, slides and sandboxes have held sway over those property rights in recent years.  The other day I was searching for an email address for a cool guy I know named Jelly. I ran across his blog, which he calls a "blawg." As it turns out, his latest post is a heartfelt celebration of the labyrinth, which made me realize that while I had always been intrigued by the idea, I had never actually walked one. This being a perfect "14 days" activity, I got a recommendation and headed out.

The first thing I learned is that I apparently suffer from a crazy romantic notion that the perfect labyrinth is set in stones and pavers amidst a lovely Shakespearean garden.  Needless to say, I was a bit puzzled as I arrived at an empty parking lot in southeast Portland, with noisy traffic and people passing by to find a labyrinth made of parking stripe paint applied on cracked and mossy pavement. This was the favored recommendation? Yet, with a trusting mind, I took a breath and a step. Here's what I discovered:

1) It's an awesome metaphor. As you survey the scene from the outside, you believe you know where the path will take you, but the minute you step inside, it doesn't go at all where you thought it would. But you just have to keep following in order to get to the center.

2) As an experience, it was similar to my sometimes ill-fated yoga efforts. It was extremely difficult to concentrate on where I was in the moment and I wanted so badly to look ahead to see where the next turn would take me.  I actually did look a few times and am thankful there was not some sort of biblical punishment applied.

3) In the end, the cracking paint and surroundings didn't matter at all. The traffic and people faded to complete unimportance. It was just me, alone in my head having a few big, clear thoughts which will remain unshared.

4) I think I'm a fan.