life. always.

Irritating is when you get home from your eighth show of the week and the most creative thing you can think to do in terms of resting is laying in your freshly made bed complete with newly changed linens, thanks to the lovely maids at your hotel. You lay down for maybe a half hour or so and get up only to be sticking to the blanket. You pat the back of one of your favorite white summer dresses and find that neon green gum has not only stuck to your blankets and pillow, but is now sticking to the back of your dress, thanks to those lovely maids at your hotel.

Kind is when all you want to do is steal away to a piano and play and when you ask the concierge if they might have a piano with which you can do that, she finds a way to make it work. Not without some strings she's pulled and not without the small caveat of her having to sit in the room with you while you play. After your alloted half hour is up, she thanks you profusely for the private concert and tells you that it was her pleasure, that even though she is at work, it didn't feel like work one bit. And to top it off, you walk in tonight to a letter slipped under your door, spelling out all the times she has made that piano available to you for every day of this week. And all mentions of the rental fee that she had first hinted at are now gone completely.

Faith is remembering that we don't see the whole picture or even any of the picture well. Most of the time, we see it more like this.
And that's when you close your eyes and try to find that flickering light within called your soul. You encourage it, you bring it to places in which it will flourish, and you Let Go of all of that other stuff that does you no good.
You hold on to the threads of truth and hope to God you didn't grab onto a misconception by accident. Cause those never hold so strong.

You also wonder why your legs are shining like the noonday sun, and the thought briefly crosses your mind that you might be an X-man. Or about to burst into flames.

Authenticity is summing up what you've been given and going with it. No ego, no pride, no false humility keeping you in hiding, just doing what you do because what other choice is there? If you are a mom, you keep giving your children milk. The milk changes from liquid, to words, to discipline, to laughter, but always it is love and always it is life to them. If you are a fish you swim and do it effortlessly. And you pucker up those lips to make Oh's with that funny mouth and sooner or later you will look over and see somebody doing it beside you and find comfort in the fact that maybe you are not so strange after all.

And if you are an artist, you make art; it's no more showing off than the stars are God's way of bragging. It is what you do. You exhaust the story from within and as soon as you do, another one begs to be told. You share and you grow and you're humbled when others listen and even more so when they don't.

And if you are a Mommy Fish with minnows trailing behind who makes a living by her underwater sculptures? Well, then you just go, girl.

Memories are when you come across a picture made by the mountains and the sky and the water here in Japan and are suddenly back in your parents' bedroom. You were afraid but are no longer because you made the long slow trek from your second floor room up to The Only Safe Place In The House, also known as mom and pop's bedroom. You passed those windows and everything, staring the dark right in it's ambiguous face before you crawled up the stairs that you are pretty sure are chock full of monster's hands that are especially made for grabbing kid's ankles, and can once again just make out the framed picture on your parents' wall. And it looks almost exactly like this.

And what a comfort it is.

The Good is sometimes hard to make out clearly. It can be a little like Mt. Fuji, obscured by clouds and hidden behind more obvious and less wonderful things.
Something solid and strong can look like just a pillar of cloud when really, it's the tallest, the widest, the oldest, the best foundation.
And no, it's not the ordinary mountain that seems to be the subject here, it's the obscured shadowy looking substance behind it. And though it doesn't look like it's there so much, it's just as big and impressive and as volcanic whether we see it or not.

Irony is finally getting to ride in Japan's Romance Car,
with one of your dear, sweet girlfriends.
Cause your husband is halfway around the world and you pray that he's well and hope hard that he's happy.