Elasticity

Duet with Sol at Gene Harding's Jam Session,
every Monday night at La Maison in New Orleans

Elasticity is

the middle ground between
strength and flexibility,
grounding and flight,
dreaming and living the reality of each day to day moment.

Elasticity is
the ability to be both
fluid and sturdy,
malleable and solid,
tough and soft all at the same time.

Elasticity is

a negotiation between
the way things are and the way you want them to be,
between standing your ground and budging just enough, just enough,
a negotiation between what you want and what you get.

Elasticity is
the strength to
live what you feel,
bend and support,
listen and make yourself heard.

Elasticity is
learning to
stay connected even as you stretch in all directions,
take initiative and share the process,
hold up the sky as you let it embrace you.

To all the wonderful people in Seattle who helped send me off on this adventure and have supported me along the way, I cannot thank you enough.  Halfway around our beautiful country, what started as an estimated 3-month journey will take more like 4 or 5 months to complete and your flexibility with my meanderings is so very helpful.

I've learned from my nomadic ways the last nearly 4 years that free flowing, gliding on the wind, on my mere fancy is oh, so liberating and joyous.  And as I floated from place to place, coming as I wanted, leaving when I pleased, an amazing sense of freedom and autonomy filled every inch of me.

Give up this freedom?  No!  And definitely not because somebody told me to.  I have discovered the power to choose.

But choosing and changing and swaying with the waves, my interactions with those around me depended a great deal on their accepting my free-wheeling ways.  "A rolling stone gathers no moss," said my friend Billy one day, "A rolling stone gathers no moss."

And this would be true, except for everywhere I go - every embrace I share, each meal, each smile, each stretch of highway - a little piece of me remains.  Traveling is intoxicating, addictive.  So many wonderful experiences - I just want more and more.  But each good-bye pains me, each new place finds its way into my heart, and halfway around our beautiful country, I realize that I've bitten off much more than a 3-month whirlwind tour across interstate highways.

Each human connection, each time I uproot to the next place, I know more and more that the sense of freedom I feel as a leaf rolling on the breezy Savannah River sunset is just as amazing as the feeling of squeezing my baby niece, having tea with my Mom, movie nights at Aunt Inna's, the familiar smell of home, my cats* snuggled up beside me, my window seat at Chocolati Cafe. 

So I thank you all for bearing with me as I develop my elasticity.  From secure structure to free-form bliss, the pendulum often swings to extremes.  And I need this process, bouncing from one end of the spectrum to the other.  After choosing to be free for so long, I am slowly choosing to set a schedule, little by little learning to calculate better the bites I take, little by little measuring time and space as I grow into the person I am meant to be without forgetting the process that made me who I am, as I learn to balance improvisation with planning, security with risk, fluidity with rigidity; as I learn to balance the me I am with the me I am becoming.  

Thank you for your support as I spread my wings and thank you for your support as I figure out how to land again. Couldn't do this without all of you in my corner!

* My cat Iris is in foster care at my Mom's.