Blue Dot.

"I'm blue" she said.
you look green to me
it isn't something you can see
...silly
well how do you know? he asked.
i feel it. right behind where my sternum normally is
What's a sternum?
The thing that protects your heart...
from your blue spot of course.
mines on vacation and left me all alone
it was quiet unexpected i must say
no leave of absence or two week notice
What's it like?
not having a sternum?
Will you die?
It's like sinking. or a weight. more like
a heaviness in your soul
but no i wont die
will it go away? Will your sternum come back?
Yes. i think. most of the time. so far.
When?
i don't know. soon. i hope

A Dot of Love.

Bloggers, 

Here comes an important American holiday: Valentine's Day. And I, as someone who is in love, feel slightly obliged to be enthused for such a day of love, and stuffed animals, and chocolates, and surprises, and jewelry, etc.  But somehow, I am not. I used to be a woman of intense excitement towards this holiday; it meant that a boy would have to express his true feelings for me; he would tell me how important I am to him. There is a whole holiday devoted to an expression of love... how romantic... I guess? 

I, as someone with a significant other, find this holiday to be a scapegoat. How can a person invest so much time and energy into one stinkin' day because our culture claims it a day of love? My first valentine's day with Trevor, I expected the whole nine yards: stuffed animal, chocolates, romantic dinner, and of course... a mushy card. I was let down. Immensely. He got me all those things that a man was supposed to get a woman for Valentine's Day, but somehow it still felt unfulfilling. How can so much expectation be wrapped up in one little day? 

Romance has been defined and redefined over the many years of my relationships. I now believe that it is an ever evolving emotion that takes on different characteristics as life progresses. In the beginning, romance was a storybook fairy tale. Candles, dinner, dress up dates, etc. Now, romance is found in the smallest gestures. For example, Neal hid a card in my bookbag and I found it this morning on my way out the door; his terrible penmanship all over this card telling me how much he appreciated the weekend adventure that I planned for his birthday. Or when we went for a solid run together and he picked me up and twirled me around even though I was super sweaty. Or offering to help clean my room because I was super stressed. 

To me, these are romantic gestures of love. Perhaps they are not universal definitions of love, but these are the ways that I feel cared for. And I think that as I get older (and more removed from the storybook fairy tale), that it will be easier to fall more in love because my definition of romance will be so simple and organic. 

All this to say that Valentine's Day is great and all... But I'd rather have a life filled with small romantic gestures than one day a year with big, extravagant romantic gestures. 

BIG love from Seattle, Che

a single, simple verse

"For the next hour, the women took turns telling their stories, singing their song. They sang about lost time and discarded fantasies and what might have been. They sang of the men who loved them, betrayed them, raped them, embraced them; they sang of the hurt inside these men, hurt that was understood and sometimes forgiven. They showed each other their stretch marks ad the calluses on their feet; they revealed their voice, the flutter of a hand, beauty warning, ascendant, elusive. they wept over the aborted children, the murdered children, the children they once were. And through all of their songs, violent, angry, sweet, unflinching, the women danced, each of them, double-dutch, and rumba and bump and solitary waltz; sweat-breaking, heart-breaking dances. They danced until they all seemed one spirit. At the end of the play that spirit began to sing a single, simple verse:

I found god in myself
and I loved her/ I loved her fiercely"

~ Barack Obama, Dreams For My Father