the wisdom of youth

well well well. 66 days later and finally i crawl out from under a warm stone here in the desert and say, hello, how's it goin'? and i hope this finds you well.

i am here in beautiful southern Arizona for the month of March and am realising that a return to the world of bloggage might be in order to keep those at various desks far from here informed of my state of being... some at said desks have been demanding a return to form and as i am currently without Word on my laptop this is as good a place for prosaic musings, which one day may or may not find their way into print.

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as for updates on my recent whereabouts - in my absence from these pages i have, in chronological order,

* seen in the new year in a desperately lonely state at a rather lavish family wedding, and then fell into a "seasonally affected and 5,000 mile distance from the one-i-find-myself-wanting -to-know-more-intimately-than-all-others induced" (C) abyss of blues.
* attempted to escape from said blues with a very spontaneous 3 and half week trip from late January into February in which i returned after 7 years away to one of my all time favourite haunts (Nashville, TN) where i spent many happy hours with some of my favourite folks on the planet, then here to the Ole Pueblo that is Tucson and increasingly feels something like home, and then hung with my bro and family in Toronto in obscenely cold weather and experienced powder snow for the first time.
* then stopped back in Belfast briefly to pay some bills and then introduce the ever-rockin' Will to my little corner of the world and my nearest and dearest.
* got on a plane with said significant other and returned once again here to write for a few weeks in warm climes and reconnect with my mojo, which has pervasively evaded me this season. lack of writing and loss of the ol' mojo are, as we have explored here before, something of a chicken and egg affair. regardless, i am writing and feeling more like myself day by day... thank heaven for small mercies.

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so here goes. some splurging...

We must always have old memories and young hopes. (message found in a fortune cookie)

i hate to beg to differ with ancient Chinese wisdom but i think i hear my gut wishing to disagree. and after all, this little slip of paper was undoubtedly printed in a bleak factory somewhere in a manner far from sage.
for sure, i can see the point: perhaps we are wiser for remembering the past. after all, those who forget history are destined to repeat it. perhaps minding our old memories means carrying with us the places and people from our journey with us. maintaining a sense of ongoing narrative. perhaps...
perhaps we should then, in turn, look to the future like children. be full of youthful zeal for the future that is yet to come. have hearts of wonderment and anticipation. hope characterized by a sense of innocence and trust. be ready for the unexpected without fear and caution. perhaps...

but perhaps we should invert this advice and instead hold that our memories be young and our hopes old... perhaps we should be mindful that our stories often contain remembrances that are as painful as they are old. the past so frequently not only haunts but binds us. perhaps each day, each moment should be a gift of memory making for us. to live in the present with a wonderment that treasures. constantly desiring to create a life that is worth remembering. perhaps...

perhaps, by contrast too, we should hold onto our old hopes. return time and again to the dreams and wishes of our youth and recognise that who we were when we were shorter than we are now we were most ourselves... most connected to our essence... and however fanciful or elaborate or plain ridiculous those hopes may seem, they tell us something intrinsic about our deep selves... about who, at heart, we really were, and still are...

with the years come layers of cynicsm and self doubt. failure and trial. and worst of all, common sense. practicality. but the hopes we had when we were young were unbridled.
when i was a girl i hoped for wide open spaces and to never stop witnessing or praising beauty, to ride like the wind on a kind horse, be held in comforting arms, sing with abandon and confidence, feel at home. i still do.
i want today to be memorable. to fall with free spirit into the beauty of comforting arms and feel a peace i will not easily forget...

We must always have young memories and old hopes. perhaps.

LB,x