using just my words

i try to take a walk every morning after i write. there is a loop i like to take around the north part of central park, which affords me a pleasant combination of people-watching and nature-observation that i find stimulating and inspiring.

today the wind kept gusting up in random bursts and shaking the leaves loose from the branches overhead. showers of yellow leaves drifted down in shafts of sunlight, like glittering golden coins, but moving more slowly,
like feathers
or molasses
or slow dancing.

it was like magic.

i realize that these are my favorite trees and i draw them often: trees with a few leaves...
perched on the precipice between fullness and hibernation,
introversion and extroversion
summer and winter.

poised in fall, like some glorious rite of passage, vibrant, proud, celebrated.

i didn't have that. responsibility and maturity rounded the corner on me at an early age and i'm just now starting to grieve it. the change. the loss of something. the birth of something else.

"how trite."
the critic in my mind scoffs at such suburban self-therapy speeches. but i don't know if comparison is the way to deal with suffering. although knowing that there are people with worse stories than mine could inspire a sense of gratitude in me, it doesn't change the fact that every human walking this earth suffers. and has hurt. baggage. regret. pain.

and everyone is free to choose how to live with that.

x,
sam

lost at sea

Manchmal habe ich Angst, dass den Teil von mir, der Deutsche ist, verloren wird.... dass er wie ein Schiff wird, das weiter und weiter segelt, bis man es nicht mehr sehen kann.

Dann denke ich nach, wie verrückt das ist. Dieser Teil kann nicht von mir getrennt werden. Der Teil ist kein Fuß um einfach ab zu nehmen.
Der ist sondern wie eine Farbe, die man überall in einem Gemälde sieht. Wenn die Farbe weg genommen würde, würde das Gemälde zerstört.

Der Teil von mir, der Deutsche ist, wird nie von mir getrennt. Es wird ewig da sein. Ich freue mich darauf.

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The above paragraph (likely full of grammatical errors) is something that struck my thoughts today... I sometimes forget that I am half German.  When I remember, I am startled by the notion that I've forgotten and fear that somehow this part of me will drift away on the sea and I will never find it again.

There have been times in my life when I embraced it fully and times when I hid it from others.  It is not fully who I am, but it is so integrated into my life and memories that in thinking about the course of my life, it cannot be ignored or trivialized.

I wrote this in German because the sentiment seemed to demand it.

love,
Sam

like raindrops

They came in that stillness, like they always do when you slow it down… they came like rain, a little at first, then more steady, splashing in big drops all around my body as I lay there like dead.

I remembered losing that little plastic shoe to my new Barbie and closing my eyes real tight and wishing for it to reappear and then opening them again to see it right in front of me on the driveway and knowing that it was a miracle.

I remembered, pulling the garden hose up the ladder to the top of the slide and running it all afternoon to make a water-slide. And later, getting in trouble for the giant mud pit that it made at the bottom.

I remembered hiding at the top of the swing-set during hide and seek, heart racing, not sure if my hiding spot was visible from the ground, but knowing that if it wasn’t, I was definitely going to win. And I remembered staying up there for much longer than I should have, enjoying my lonely victory.

when i grow up...

i want to be an artist, seamstress and musician.

someone will pay me to do this, right?

avoiding it...

i think sometimes my emotions make me claustrophobic... so i just ignore them.

this explains a lot.