do you realize?

Oh my darlingest world of wonders.

My house has never looked so fine. Painted, stained, cleaned, beloved. My house never looked so fine until the day I locked it five years later and said farewell.

As for me, I am feeling ever so fine. I am sufficiently exfoliated, highlighted, toe-painted, and naturally bedazzled in healthy glowingness.
Cheers to you, oh you sweet Origins products. (Or their placebo effect. It's all the same to me).

'Did you ever look so nice?' ask The Samples all these years later.

Gosh if I know.

My dear friend so-and-so (who calls it 'creepy' when I secretly write about him in my blogs as if I would ever leave any identifying marks, whatever, I have to have SOMETHING or SOMEONE to write about, to inspire my trivial musings, right? Right? Oh f-off you so-and-so and deal with it. Go get flattered by it or something).

...oh yeah, what was my point? My dear friend (who calls me creepy to my face for writing about him in my blogs and yet reads them several times in pure enjoyment) says that he can ever remember how old I am even though I've half-told him a thousand times or more. Perhaps it is our desert expanse of digit difference that scares me and that he, in turn, finds comforting. Thumb suckage. Mama? Dunno. Who cares.

Anyway, oh thee darlingest world of wonders, here I have landed.

Upon a hilly landscape with a sunny clear, and yet muted, view of my new life.

In Oakland, California.

It's always this way, isn't it?  Clear, yet muted, from one moment to the next.

This is the greatest gift actually.

In the getting lost and subsequently getting more lost while seeking to find - you realize that you are constantly living - IN THE MOMENT.

Wow man.

I mean, seriously WOW.

How often does that happen?

How about like... almost never? I mean, I'm no Buddha or meditation guru. In shavasana, while lying there listening to Ben Harper's rendition of 'Beautiful Boy,' everlastingly grateful that I'm no longer sweating wet blazing bullets onto my yoga mat and holding some crazy ass pose with all my might and concentration and will and love and breath; in shavasana, I am thinking about some guy's beautiful kiss, or whether I should make guacamole later with that overripe avocado on the counter, and oh damn, did I remember to put the wet clothes in the dryer. Shit like that. I can't just lie there, all peaceful-like, and focus on my breath. Oh hell no.

But move me across the country - with only a few possessions to claim and garments to cover my naked body and a fancy pedigreed, longhaired, fur-log barfing diva 'tude cat (with a sweet soul) that I shoved under the seat in front of me for seven long hours - and hey, check it out,  I'm right here, right now, in a way I wish I could live more often.

I suppose it's a bit of survival mode kicking in. Of course it must be. I sleep like a log. I wake up easily. I am energized by endorphins and newness. It's like a fantastic high, I guess. Only it feels much, much calmer than I've felt in a while. My expectations are not grandiose. They are realistic and real and true and not generated from an ego-driven place. Because I focused on this sense of wellness, I willed it into being, I prayed for it. (Yes, me, who isn't religious, I prayed to the universe, on my knees, and into my pillow at night, I prayed for change, for a better life).

Within these moments of feeling undeniably ensconced in a sense of being a stranger in a strange land, I am quite peaceful. I get what that feels like to experience all that's around me. Surely, this is for the first time so it's hard not to notice. But, what's key is to remember what it FEELS like to experience things for the first time: their sounds, their shadows and light, their beauty and ugliness, smell, taste and touch, and revel in all of it. Just let it wash over me in a wave.

Can I learn to do this all the time?

With practice, maybe.  A lot of practice.

May I encourage whoever may be reading this now: in your apartment or house, look around at all that's familiar and see it like you've never seen it before. It's like how you feel when you return home from a long trip away. Everything's familiar and yet it's all new again.

Life can be this way, I believe.

It just takes opening your eyes. And that beating bloody ceaseless thing in your chest. Feel that. Breathe into it. And don't forget that your life is finite. As The Flaming Lips remind us 'Do You Realize?"

So do you?

I do.

Welcome to this new world of awakeness. Welcome. It feels pretty alright to be aware. I'll try live in this moment - as long as I can.