For those of you worried, please don’t.

Writing, meditating, metaphor-chasing, psychoanalyzing – they are my ways of unwinding a tangled life. Yet my life hasn’t many knots in it these days. It’s blissfully simple. I used to love to pull out my tarot cards and do a quick reading. My eyes still occasionally fall upon the deck, but I flinch at the old adventures of digging into the past, etching at the future, and scratching for the surreal. My eyes flee from the deck as they do most things that threaten to steal me from the surprises of the present moment.

This is the happiest year of my existence – possibly my life. I’m certain there are knots and tangles ahead. And I’ll save all my trusty means of metaphor-seeking for assistance through those inevitable life trials and travels. For now, I’m resting in the shade of the tree I myself planted. For in the front of every travel journal I ever took abroad, starting with the first I took to Guatemala now nine years ago, I printed the following poem by Kahlil Gibran….

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

I’ll be on the road again soon, with upcoming adventures in India, Indonesia, and possibly Cambodia. And I have a new camera to find and tell more stories. I’ll be gone for longer than I’m comfortable, but I wake every morning and take account of the blessings in my life that allow for me to be so delicately stretched (not severed) between two worlds and loves.

A few recent stories from the “stitch” of my new Sony Alpha Nex-5…