So, I am sure you are on Facebook. Please don’t pretend you aren’t. You know how it works as well as I do. I have nearly 400 friends and I know each and everyone of them with the slight exception of two) in person.

The site has been making several structural changes recently and its causing an uproar. I myself have played fast and loose with threats to leave if they keep altering things making it easier and easier to “stalk” people. However, while jogging today, I was really thinking about the possability of my leaving the site. And I don’t see it happening.

This is why. Facebook gives mea chance to share in all those little pointless comments, jokes, observations and day to day-ities with 400 of my closest friends. I know that sounds silly. Who can have 400 close friends? But the reality, for me anyway, is that I have shared the pointless comments, jokes, observations and day to day-ities in REAL LIFE with all but two people I am friends with on Facebook. My friends fall into groups pertaining to diffrent time periods of my life…diffrent incarnations of the same me…but they were…each and every one…horribly important and present in my life at some point in my past or present.

Facebook, allows that to continue…to restart in many cases without the pressure to be informative that e-mail, letters and phone calls usually present. I mean how many of us see our real wolrd friends and talk about serious or life altering events every time? No one right? That would be INTENSE. No…instead we share a lot of one liners and joke around and refrence silly commonalities. Facebook allows for that. It allows for the heavy stuff to….

That’s why I like Facebook….it keeps me connected to the unimportant things pertaining to the important people in my life.

there’s one man, he’s like
the wishful thinking in my life, i see so
and he’s like the wine on the weekend…
and though he is like the sea and it’s right he be so
if i hold tight he’ll wash over me…

there’s one girl I like she’s a smile on a monday
and she’ll fight to stay so…
and she’s like the sun on the weekend
and though she is like the sea and she’s right to be so
still i like that she sails with me…

didn’t we all break down
didn’t we all fake
isn’t it alright now
didn’t we all break out…

there’s one man so bright he blocks the light
and he’ll always be so…
he’s like no sleep on the weekend
and though he is like the sea and he’s right to be so
when i hold tight i sink down deep…

didn’t we all break down
didn’t we all fake
isn’t it alright now
didn’t we all break out…

and though we are like the sea and it’s right we be so
we could chase tails all the years I’ve been given…

So, I have taken up jogging.
You know, I always used to love to run as a child.
I don’t really remember when I stopped.
But I did…I totally hated running….
Until about two weeks ago when I decided to go for a jog.
This strange, abrupt and intense desire to pick up that pace has hit me several times, randomly, over the last eight years or so.
But now…I’m working on forming a new habit.
I love it. I look forward to taking to the wet streets of my city and bobbing beneath the cherry blossomed trees.
I like the nod of acknowledgment between the other hundreds of joggers on the street…as if to say, “good on you mate.”
Most of all however, I love when its over and I’ve arrived home. The key pops the lock of the front door open and as I enter my home I am flooded over with creativity. All the answers to the day’s problems seem so clear…and the problems themselves seem to have shrunk in weighty-ness.
Jogging is a new thing in my life that I feel liks has been a part of me for eternity and I am so pleased to be taking part in it.
I don’t want to encourage you to jog, but instead to find that thing that exhausts you in such an invigorating way.

for the scent of turkey filling the house
for the chill temperature in the upper level of my house
for the dog I am dog sitting that keeps running up and down the stairs to check on the turkey for me
for the hot hot shower I didn’t have to speed through this morning
for airplanes that bring important people in and out of whatever town I find myself in
for coffee shops with baristas that know my regular order
for my regular order
for the ability to choose order over chaos
for the ability to revel in the chaos
for the bunny lounging in the dining room and waiting for its thanksgiving banana
for the smiles that come so easily these days
for the people who I love so dearly on nearly every continent
for the internet and cell phones that keep us in contact
for the written word
for the multnomah county library
for the written word and all the writers…even the ones I don’t care for…
for young men’s visions and old men’s dreams
for lyrics
for poetry
for the right to vote
for musicals
for mashed potatos
for lavendar scented freshly folded laundry
for pillowtop mattresses
for India (even when it doesn’t really know what it ought to do)
for the Word made flesh
for peace that passes understanding
for google maps
for the fact that every woman and girl looks beautiful in a Sari
for wall to wall carpeting
for unlimited in txting
for woodfloors
for a memory of sleeping on a heated Korean floor
that I didn’t kill James on that bus in China when I really really wanted to
that I know what it feels like to wake up on a roof top in West Africa because I swallowed a bug
that I don’t hate my job
that we always have Portland
that Portland is not only what it was, but now something very current as well
that there is a guitar in this house
that there are more opportunities than hours in a lifetime to pursue them
that I haven’t been bored in years
that lists exist
that families are expanding all around me
that rain is lightly pelting against my roof
that the people I love have so many things to be thankful for themselves
that I have a lot more than this for which I am thankful.

I picked up a leaf on my way to Starbucks this morning and suddenly asked myself if I was playing some sort of part; some sort of beautiful leaf picking up in the chill morning mist of Portland Autumn part. At first I felt embarrassed because obviously I was. I don’t generally make a habit of picking up beautiful things while I walk though I do try to notice them. So then why such a feeling of satisfaction in the sight of it? The thought if it being beautiful and yet rejected in that beauty as of no use to that which it had been of ultimate use for an entire season is heartbreaking. Should there be such satisfaction in the gathering of this kind of beauty; in playing this part? And why were there so many other leaves I longed to pick up? Why did I wish I could think of some useful purpose for gloriously beautiful newly shed fall leaves so that I might gather them by the armful and take them home? This was not a part. This was “me.” What ever “me” is. The part I play is the person walking down the street noticing but not embracing all the gorgeousness at her feet. Why? Why deny myself such a simple pleasure in the name of playing the role of “normal, non-demonstrative” or whatever other cloak of invisibility I can throw over my self. Why do I aim for disappearance when all I really want, like everyone else, is to be seen? Maybe that is why I want to gather all the leaves…because they can not help but be seen.