i am thin-skinned and slippery. thrown down by the ghost in the cross-walk and stunned into contortion and compromise.

i am no-sense and without words of comprehension, human and forgetting.

i am not tough. i am not able to sustain prolonged periods of cavalry and command.

i am water and wimp, softness and salve. i want for peace, strong arms, and a soft wool blanket.

every time i go away, every time i stretch myself, i am humbled by how long it seems to take before i can feel the ground again.

it takes many brief reminders, like the glancing of fingertips, to feel, in my body, where i belong.

photo: siblings in Fajardo. August 2011.

i arrive in layers, parts, pieces. the more primitive show up first. want, need, fragile, and fight. i  arrive tenderness and ill-timed, and with the irrepressible urge to scrub down the refrigerator from top to bottom. i am impatience with the car that needs washing and a body longing to do nothing. i am judgment of the fatigue and the dusty suitcase on the floor. the adventure craves the domestic, but rarely speaks of this. the pleasure of the clean cave, the zen of food and rolling socks in pairs. the sweeping and the eggs.

meanwhile, i download and name files, replace lost sunglasses and the shoes i gave away, and remain mostly mute while i wait for the rest of me. the more graceful parts. the ones that communicate, remember, translate, and transcribe. they tend to arrive more quickly when i sit still.

photo: Tarahumara baskets for sale, train-side, somewhere between Divisadero and Bahuichivo. August 2011.

i have arrived.

all is well.

will rest today and head to CASA tomorrow.

it happens every time.

i love the adventure and i am always challenged by the leaving. the comfort of my people. their love, their voices, their touch. they are my home.

and so here i am. at the airport. leaving for mexico in just three hours. i am filled with poignancy, the vulnerability of living. i’m already in that transition zone–the anticipating coming to meet the experience. there is always fear before departure. the release and the letting go. and there is always buoyancy, too. the messages of belief and the offerings of confidence and faith. i sit here, glass of wine in hand, part of me longing for the warm bodies of home, knowing that this is what it is to truly be awake: to be somewhere between longing and calling. to be rooted and also free. to be loved and to be let go. to trust, to allow, to strategize, and to surrender.

with 23 hours to go, 55 people have backed this leg of the doorways project. the lenses are clean, the notepad is ready. i’m shedding layers of what-if’s and writing to you from the continental airport lounge. i just want to do my part. to give what i’ve got to give.

it’s been a big year for me and my people. we’ve learned what it is to experience separation and to find one another again more deeply in love and rooted than ever before. it is hard to leave them, if only for a little less than two weeks. the truth is that i’ve got a family that rocks my world and a world that rocks my heart.

there is room and time for both. and one would not exist without the other. it is in the fully living, the chest open, that freedom expands. the doorways are everywhere, even in the leaving.

next post will be from san miguel de allende…

photo: when we went blueberry picking. i love the muted, not quite in focus, forms. i love them. july 2011.