You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

There is no good.

And there is no bad.

There just is.

There is a season, though. The earth breathes, the birds migrate.

My roommate Jared and I went out to the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge a couple of weeks back. We took a walk along the slough at lowish tide. Here at the bay, the tide also changes the landscape daily. So we get the seasons yearly and the tide recedes and advances twice daily. Nothing is ever the same. It doesn't stay stagnate, like the Houston skyline. There is an ebb and flow to life here where nature has not been so obliterated by commerce and man's dominion.

We saw lots of birds, mostly pipers, but no geese. It's not the time of year when they are here. They just stop here on their way somewhere else.

I'm not doing that. This is the end of the road for me. I have made my migration. This is the end of the line.

The path begins on another bay, another coast very different from this one, where my children live. I will feel that tug to return as long as they are there.

I started this journey, this leg of my life, four years ago. I started this blog on a yoga weekend that I had gifted myself as a respite after signing the divorce papers.

I wrote hard in this blog, while I tried to find my feet in the stream, gave in, and let the current take me.

I tried to catch the wind but kept my kite string tied down near the capitol of Texas, and then, last February, I untied the knot, waved goodbye to Jim and Val and began the journey here.

And still we ran all summer, back and forth across the continent, so much to do and learn that I haven't had the energy to unravel it all.

And now we are here, and I have been busy these past few weeks digging in and putting down roots. I don't want to get swept away again.

Today is the my niece's anniversary. She's been married to a really sweet man for 5 years now, and they have a beautiful little girl. Her wedding was held in her mother's prairie, behind her art studio outside of Houston and was presided over by the man you see with me and my sons in the picture above. He spoke of the importance of love and family and taking care of each other. I was so moved. It was what I had always wanted, what I thought I had, even though lately it was hard to believe that. He had worked so hard on his "sermon." It was beautiful, it was eloquent, and it was bullshit. See me smiling? I am the best actress on the planet. I had that smile planted on my face, but I was miserable. Two weeks later, on a Sunday night after I had gotten off work at the Writing Center, turned in my midterms for my second to the last semester of grad school, and had to be back at my job teaching HS English in the morning, he told me that he didn't love me and that he wanted me to leave our home.

Five years. Facebook showed me this pic this morning, and it got me thinking. That night, I thought my life was over. It was. The life you see depicted in the above picture, a life that was a facade with a narcissist pedophile who used me for my money and my procreative ability was gone. Poof.

I broke down 5 years ago. The cracks had been showing, but when it was all said and done, like a coyote in a trap, I would have bitten my own foot off to get out of there. In fact, I did. In order to seperate myself from him, a compulsive manipulator who sees his family as his possessions, I had to leave my sons. I told myself that they were almost grown, and that it would be ok, but I struggle to maintain a relationship with them. Both grown men now, they still live with him.

But as I looked for this picture, I saw all the pics taken since. 

In them I am dancing:

Laughing with friends:

And crazy in love:

Life is good. I have a wonderful life. These smiles are real.

Namaste'