I have been living in two elements, parallel universes. I can see through one bubble into another and another and another. I have lived with many beta fish (fighting fish) and it is truly a wonder to see them when it's time to mate. The male tends the eggs, blowing a thick layer of bubbles and guarding them with his life.

We live in bubbles too, but rarely do we realize it. In the past few days one of my bubbles burst, a big one, and as I was slipping into a kind of despair I saw through that bubble to another one still intact with a rainbow egg inside. We are surrounded by bubbles that hold our dreams. Some will burst and some will float us out of our present reality and into another. The wonderful thing is that there are more and more and more bubbles all around us. Sometimes we are led to what feels like our ultimate dream and when the bubble bursts, we despair, but what if we were drawn to that bubble so that when it burst we could see our way to our true heart's desire? These are things I have been wondering about the last few days.

I had wanted, and planned, to move to Asheville, NC. I would still like to be there, but rather than sooner, it will be later. I can't move with my mother on the brink of dying, and there will be much to settle when the time comes. There are family members here and a move to arrange and it's harder when you are not married/partnered/have no help, and know no one there. That doesn't mean I won't do it. I went to Colorado on my own years back when I was accepted to Naropa University, the school of my dreams. I was then in my late forties. I knew no one and I arranged the whole move myself. It was wonderful.

So perhaps that bubble didn't burst, but got pushed back amongst the other bubbles, waiting to come to gestation until the time is right. There is so much here to love and feel grateful for.

Right now I am looking at a wonderful wild funky painting of a woman and a flamingo on my wall. I am looking at a piece of weaving I am very proud of. It took me many months to do it because it was a very intricate design. It was called Ariadne's web.



Made on a 1950's potholder loom, the circular
pattern of the weaving was painfully difficult as
I got to the center...





But perhaps that's how life is. As we get closer to our dreams, we are more challenged, perhaps moreso because we are being tested. Go slowly. Think of all the angles and the difficult turns in the road. Is it worth it, should I do it? Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no. I'm too far from the center to know right now, in my haste to extricate myself from too much pain here, I was rushing toward what I thought would be relief and peace, but there is no way around that weaving to the middle to know the truth. The truth is that the time is not right.

Weaving is sacred to me, never without a purpose, requiring concentration, skill, and mostly heart. I don't know what I am making when I start, but the story is revealed along the way. So it was with Ariadne. And so I begin again this night to weave, and in so doing, I will find my way home.

Keep believing, keep dreaming, but don't let a seeming delay in your plan discourage you. Look through to the next bubble, and see what still needs to be done before you can get there. Revel in your dreams, cherish the present, allow the continuum to flow with grace...

Love,

What if... you knew you were meant to be some place other than where you were? What if you were born in the mountains (in your heart, mind and gut), and had lived in two different mountain regions, the happiest, most grounded times of your life? What if you were 55, unhappy where you were, it seemed like as difficult a climb to reach your dream as to reach the mountain itself, but you knew you had to be there? What if?

In the last bit of time, my closest friend and I have talked about leaving this town where we both live, longing for other places. We will be heading in two different directions and no one knows but he and I what my heart longs for. It is not the time to tell anyone yet. We are riding big waves right now, coming in close to shore to face my mother's impending death. Time, it's all about timing...

I lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the country for 11 years. I traveled to New Mexico in 1990 and high in the Sangre de Cristo mountains I felt I'd found my destiny. I fell on my knees and I cried. I didn't want to go home, but of course I went. I was married with beautiful children and there was no question, then, what I should do. For twenty years I have wanted to live in New Mexico, but now it is too far, too expensive, too distant a dream.

In the year 2000 I moved to Colorado for a time, and rented an old farmhouse facing the Rocky Mountains. I would sit out on the wide front porch early in the morning on my old 1940's glider and have my coffee and wonder how I had ended up in Paradise yet again. My time there was short lived and I wept when I had to leave those mountains to come back to my ocean town. A lovely little city, a water city, with the Cape Fear River on one side and the beautiful North Carolina beaches on the Atlantic ocean on the other. Beautiful, but not for me. I need mountains. I need snow and cooler weather, not near tropical weather where the heat is past dreadful and there really aren't four seasons. I said it when we moved here in November 1992, "There's something wrong with living some place that you can get your Christmas tree wearing shorts." No, this has never been home to me, not ever. I don't want to die here one day.

I love Folk music dearly, and so when I saw a movie that I could rent called The Songcatcher I rented it, not knowing where it had been filmed or what the film was about except mountain music and a woman who went to study it. When the movie started I sat in shock to see that the movie was filmed in the exact location I have been telling my friend that I wanted to move. I was awestruck and tried to breathe the mountain air in through the screen. I wanted so badly for the movie never to end, and I felt a great sense of loss when it did.

I have such dreams. To live out my life in a little place in the mountains, to see it snow outside my windows as I decorate the tree, parrots and dogs all around me, a pot of soup bubbling on the stove, in the middle of writing my book with a basket of fiber and spinning wheel at my side. I have this dream and I intend to make it a reality.

After the movie ended, sitting in the silence, the room was too still and my emotions were rising too high, undone by the movie and being struck head on by images of the very place I've longed to see in person. I have been there before. Been through the area several times. Now, it is the Smoky Mountains that call to me, a town with rich culture, artisans of every type, the holy smoke anointing the sky over the mountain range, a place where a woman could plant flowers and herbs and vegetables, and pray. A place where a woman could write and perhaps look out of her window to see a doe and her fawn nosing about in the grass. A place so unimaginably beautiful it makes your heart beat faster and there is a lilt to your voice when you speak of it, joy floods your body like a warm river, hope of a new life, a new start, a chance at life when you thought you had given up. I need the mountain air to breathe. I need the rolling hills and mountain tops to feel safe. I am a mountain woman in a flat town surrounded by water. I have been drowning here.

Finally I decided it was too silent. 1 a.m. on a Saturday night, my heart was aching, and I couldn't imagine breaking the silence with the television and couldn't fathom that there would be anything of interest on but I turned it on, a sleeping pug draped over my right side, Big Dog Moe asleep on his bed next to me on the floor, the three other little pugs snug in the beds, and the birds all asleep. So I clicked on the t.v. and quickly found an Ani DiFranco special on public television and was instantly mesmerized. She was singing folk music. She is so amazing and wakes you up, shakes you up, and soothes the spirit and the heart all in a matter of a few songs. Too soon it was over. How can an hour pass so fast? Sometimes the minutes just creep painfully by, but I breathed in that music like a baby taking her first breath. In one night a movie and unexpected music settled in that place in my heart where the seed of my future life has been living. I sit here overcome with emotion, trembling with fear, poking at the dream to see if it is alive. It is very much alive in my heart.

I do not know how long it will take or when it will happen, but sometime in the next several months I will be living where I was meant to settle and start over, a place where I can live out the rest of my life, do my work, and let the solitude and silence echo through the four chambers of my heart.

I am going to get ready to go to sleep. I'm hoping when I close my eyes I will be transported to those mountains. And the promise of finding my way home will be a little closer in the morning...