Monday, March 26

First of all, what a great ski weekend!  Lovely March, a most incredible month, akin to the glories that September has to offer.  Days that hold the promise of a new season, new activities, new goals, the same days that sustain the accomplishments and victories of the current season.


JC and I went to a memorial for a friend yesterday evening.  A few thoughts about that:


Whenever someone asks me which I like better: Hawaii or Telluride, I always answer, Well I moved back, didn't I?  One of the main reasons I did come back was because I missed the community.  There is a fabric to this community that you see in all its textures and colors at a gathering like that, and although it is unfortunate that an event like this brings everyone together, together we are.  We did not stay to hear everyone share their memories but for the time we were there it truly felt like a celebration.


We celebrated someone who celebrated his own life, someone who took the time to get to know himself so well that there could be only one way to live his life.  He celebrated snow and mountains and freedom and from what a friend told me, he also celebrated parents that fully supported him and his lifestyle.


We celebrated all of our emotions, emotions at least one of us feels on a daily basis, but which are made more potent and intense by the ripping of the fabric, as a part of our quilt is briefly torn open.  We celebrated the frayed ends that feel raw and exposed but that are still held by the remaining threads that are woven so tightly together.


A few weeks ago I dreamed I was dying and I was intensely sad in my dream.  I was overcome with the urgency of trying to communicate how surprised I was to suddenly feel sadness at simply not feeling alive anymore.  I said to my mom, "Living - being alive - is so sweet, so precious."  I didn't want to stop feeling all the feelings that being alive contains.


When Chuck Kroger died JC told me it left him with a feeling not of Now I really need to start living my life the right way, or Now I should really make some big changes and start doing things I have always wanted to do.  Rather, he walked away feeling that the best thing he should do is keep on living his life exactly how he already is, just keep doing more of it.


Because in the end, aren't we really celebrating the fact that we are still alive?  Dying is very hard on the living, but a quick, unexpected passing doesn't need to be a "wake-up call" if we are already celebrating ourselves with the choices we make.  We have chosen this lifestyle because nothing else will suffice.  We have chosen this community because it allows us to feel all that living contains - smooth sailings, rough patches, mountain highs, valley lows, bitter cold nights, long warm sunny days, endless times of stagnancy and flourishes of growth and expansion.


Being alive, being truly alive, belonging to the living, being embodied in all our winds of change, contains a sweetness.  So let's keep savoring it until we have extracted every last flavor from ourselves and the people in our lives.