Endings and Beginnings

Love has a hundred gentle ends.  - Leonora Speyer

I am back home from Salt Lake City, glad to be back home, surrounded by so many of the people I love.  It was more difficult than I ever imagined to leave Nascar there.  I cannot wait for him to come visit for the weekend soon.  I will say that my man's shoulders are broader and he stands a bit taller now, and I like the way the new job looks on him.  I am proud that he chose to pursue his career path, and I am excited for him to have taken on this change and these new responsibilities with not a complaint and only excitement.

The city of Salt Lake was less inviting than I thought it would be.  The people are superficially nice, but there is a strange undercurrent of religion and white male oriented culture.  It has been a long time since I have been outside of my safe little bubble diversity that is the Bay Area.  I am afraid that moving there, I may become apathetic, perhaps a little lazy, about upholding my truths.  

I have spent the last 2 days wandering the city of San Francisco, being enamored with the graffiti, with the people, and the attitude that permeates our streets.  I am soaking it in, drinking it up, and participating in it as much as possible, because it is my plan to bring that spirit with me to SLC.  I will resist the apathy, I will remain true to my quest.  I will demand that the male salesman in SLC include me in the conversation, and not only direct their questions to Ryan.  I will interact kindly with all those I meet in SLC, but I will never lose sight of my truths.  I will not cry, be bored, or feel sorry for myself, because life has taken this interesting, albeit difficult turn.  I will prune my rose bushes, hike in the mountains, and read books that inspire my creativity and my passion.  San Francisco offers so much stimulation that I think I may have become somewhat apathetic here.  I think I may relish the slower pace and a chance to look for stimulation and insight inside books and within nature.

Buddhist Temple in the Mission

Bryant and 23rd Streets Girl Power

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While in Salt Lake City, Nascar and I went hiking in the SNOW.  Snow is this strange frozen stuff that falls from the sky and then hangs out on the ground making it slippery and hard to walk.  We walked up these things called mountains.  It was very different from experiencing nature via the windshield.  It was so freaking loud.  The rushing of the water, the sound of animals in the underbrush, made me so jumpy and uncomfortable.  I definitely have a lot to learn about nature and how to be in it.  

As I begin to say good bye to people I love here, I am beginning to realize that I do not have to say good-bye forever, but rather just a see you later.  It is my dramatic nature to see the endings as abrupt and final, instead of a refractory moment in time, placed right before a beginning.  In fact, a lot of life is like that.  The endings, no matter how hard, lead up to something new, something fresh.  The same people I have drank cocktails with in Mission bars, worked at SFGH with, shared homes with - all the people I love here - maybe they can come to me and if I get good enough at it, I can show off some Utah nature to them.  Perhaps together, we can giggle incessantly at the backward ways of the hardcore religious folk, and maybe our friendships will stretch the miles.

Nature hike

Ice Art

Nature Graffiti