vagabond

i am a lover and i am a vagabond-- the people and places and souls that i live to pour into are at a million different longitudes and latitudes. home is in his eyes and home is in her laughter and home is in the stoplight on the way into that town. how beautiful is it to find such peace, such joy, such security in so many places, people, things. how terrible it is to be in a constant state of longing for the pieces of home that are on a different page of the atlas. 

i am pining for roots, envious of the girl who, like the oak in her front yard that grows as she does, has her whole world at the tips of her fingers, anchored on years of life and love condensed into one dot on the map. how fulfilling must it be to know that everyone and everything your heart beats for is within reach. 

it brings me great joy to love richly, to know deeply, and to invest in the lives of those who are important to me. it brings me great peace to make lists and check off items, to give my best each day, and to spend time in the places that i know best. but i have not figured out how to successfully do these things without sacrificing another in the process. we each get the same 24 hours, and i feel as though im missing something, the secret of how to make them enough. i am a yes-girl when the question is love, but too often, i feel as if ive failed. i strive to give the best of myself in everything i do - to everyone i treasure - but even then, i am not perfect. 

i am a lover and i am still learning.

but maybe that's what life is all about.

the sun is on vacation in

the sun is on vacation in
oxford she asked the
clouds to
collect her daily
newspapers from her
sidewalk and water
her garden so her
flowers can
g
r
o
w

magic:

magic, theyll tell you, is just for kids, and even then, only for those naive enough to believe in it. in order to succeed in the world, they'll tell you, you must be sensible and logical and greet each day with a heavy dose of cynicism and doubt. they'll use things such as time or age or comparison to others to diminish your sense of wonder and extinguish any flame of adventure in your heart.

but theyre all wrong.

life is the longest game of hide and seek with magic, in countless forms, hiding away in the crevices of each day. the best part about this never-ending game is that magic is a terrible hider, like the blonde haired girl named after the river who climbs in the kitchen cabinet as her brother counts to twenty, not even trying to hold back her laughter, directing him straight to her secret place. we do not need to search out magic as we go through our days; instead, magic is revealed to us in the simplest of ways.

 magic: running into a dark-eyed stranger with calloused hands on the corner by your favorite coffeeshop, taking in the warmth of their smile as they apologize, and carrying on with your day with a new sense of compassion for any unfamiliar passing face. 

magic: the big moon illusion-- driving on the freeway at 6:42 pm, watching the moon (as big as a mountain) as it follows you home to safety.

magic: meeting someone for the first time and beginning a conversation about their favorite book or poem or writer and realizing that the inked in words that impacted you so deeply are important to an unimaginable amount of people youve never met.

magic: walking to the mailbox as you wish for more time, more hours, more days, to accomplish everything you need to-- receiving a letter from a friend in your hometown telling you that the sun rises and sets exactly when she's supposed to

magic: buying old black and white pictures from antique stores and imagining the lives of the men and women in the pictures-- their names, their favorite words, what was happening when the picture was taken, if they've ever been in love.

magic: when someone calls you their best friend-- people who share their lives with you, learn with you, grow with you.

magic: driving with the windows down on your favorite road in august and watching the first leaf fall onto your windshield, realizing that change is necessary and good and beautiful.

magic: to love and be loved, knowing that every person who has lived on this earth, the ones you know, the ones youre related to, and the ones you will never even hear of, has felt the same way you do.

they will tell you that magic is a thing reserved for youth. but youll tell them that theres no such thing as being too old, too mature, too grown up, for magic.