Time Flies.

Weirdly enough, it is Facebook that sometimes reminds me how quickly time passes.

This morning, for example, it told me (because like Google, it is creepy and all-knowing) that six years ago today I set off for New Zealand.  For 42 days.

In those 42 days, my weight plummeted from dangerous to deadly; my mind fractured, knit itself back together, fractured again; I got my first tattoo; I cried until I felt dry on the inside; I was given a name that is not my own, that still feels foreign to me despite a great man's conviction that he was right (and by default, I was wrong); I met some of the most intensely alive, vibrant, and giving people I have ever met.  Ever.

I learned yoga.  I learned to teach yoga.  I learned to let go.

Still, sometimes those many days don't seem real to me.  Sometimes they feel like a dream I had that sustains me even while it shames me.  It feels like something I didn't do, but some other version of me did.

Some version of me that I still want to be- with thin arms and ragged ferocity.  With terror and honesty and lies; with creativity that exploded because of desperation.  I miss that version of me.  Beyond the disease that is my oldest, most unrelenting companion, I miss that version of me for her flagrant, bold insanity.  Never was my writing so raw, never were my feelings so scattered or simultaneously so underwhelming and so overwhelming.

Never was I so wild.  My journals from that time, this blog from that time, are uncomfortable but they are real because they are hers.  And because she is me and they are mine, too.

Sometimes those many days don't seem real and then sometimes it seems like they are too far removed from me.  That she is.

Time.

Just.

Flies.

Mizpah.

Here are some things you may or may not know about me.

I often become obsessed with words and I get lines of poetry stuck in my head the way others get songs stuck in theirs.

I am frequently far away.  In thought or in my actual physical being, I am often separated from the people and the places that I love.

I have tattoos.  I have tattoos of birds, runes, witches.  I have tattoos that depict ancient Celtic folklore and everyday nursery rhymes.  I have a tattoo on my foot that failed to take it's intended shape but that I'll likely never cover over or fix because I sort of like failed, burnt look of it.


No one... I mean no one... would accuse me of being a Christian.

I am (I think) an okay person.  I have morals and understand right, wrong, and the vast gap of space between the two extremes.  But I do not believe in the god that Christians believe in.  I do not have the same faith.  Nor would I propose to.

Which is why I am likely as confused as you are at this point when it comes to my utter obsession with the word, the concept, 'Mizpah.'

It is a Hebrew word which means 'watchtower' (which is cool enough on it's own to be totally honest) and yet historically it has taken on a meaning so much more than that.  Mizpah is a sort of emotional bond- a word that signifies care and keeping and ongoing love even when separated from it all.  And from everyone.  It is a way of saying goodbye with the hope and intent of seeing each other again, in good health and happy.  And right.  It is important.

But hang on, it gets better.

The Genesis quote in which it appears (yes.  Genesis.  The first book of the Bible.... I am, in fact, waiting for the lightning bolt to strike at any moment):

'And Mizpah; for he said, the Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.'

There is something eerily beautiful and mesmerizing in that phrase.  Something that makes me want to jump in feet first and have it put on my body.  'watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.'

I have always been hesitant to have words tattooed.  Runes don't really count.  At least not to my thinking; they are an ancient, unused language.  One for the gods and old time.  And the 'everyday nursery rhyme' I mentioned earlier?  I translated it into Runic before I had it tattooed.  So that was a thing.

But this- this would be something different.  This would override all of my ideal and young notions of TS Eliot lines as tattoos.  This would be a permanent reminder of all the people from whom I am parted; of all the time during which I am parted from them.  This would hearken back to a world that I willingly left behind.  This would be something different indeed.

And until next time,

Mizpah.

The Doldrums.

There is an area of the ocean called the Intertropical Convergence Zone.  It sounds complicated and terribly exotic but isn't really.  It is the region roughly between 5N and 5S where the trade winds meet, causing squalls and all manner of foul weather, but also where the hot equatorial air rises and keeps the world still for days, weeks at a time.

That stillness is the doldrums.

Sailors know it as such, poets know it as such.

Stillness, to me, is it's own sort of madness.  It's a quiet, low-scale, gnawing madness that strangles you slowly.  Stillness is my apparent nemesis.  It's why I'm so antsy all the time; why I can't do just one thing at a time but rather must do many things all at once; it's why I fidget and why I am a terrible patient.  It's why my knee bounces when I sit for too long and why long-haul flights feel like torture even as they feel like freedom.

It's why I like sharpness, speed, motion.  I like things to be vibrant and lively.

Stillness is madness.

This January is proving to be a test of my ability to withstand my own madness.  It seems like everything right now is standing impossibly still.  Like my whole life closed in on me and the walls of my cell are shrinking with it.  The wind has died, and my ship is failing.

And all I have to keep me company is the great grey sky.