I saw an injured butterfly on my walk. I asked her what happened and she told me she bumped into a tree and tore part of her wing, so she could no longer fly. I asked if she was wracked with guilt and anxiety, to potentially have shortened an already brief life of a butterfly. She gently explained to me that no, she was at peace with herself, and her brief life. She said that misery and suffering come not from the events of our lives, but from our reaction to, and resistance to those events. That if we can find it in ourselves to learn to surrender more, we would find the peace we so desperately seek in our minds. I listened as she spoke and I felt her wisdom rush over me like warm sun rays. I told her about how I am learning to stop resisting and also, to be kinder to myself. That even though I do, say, and think things on a daily basis that dont please me, I am slowly starting to stop fighting my own self. Learning to truly love myself the way I did when I was a little girl, with kindness and compassion. I was looking up at the blue sky and telling so much of my story to my new friend. After I was finished talking, I felt so happy knowing what she knew about me, and my progress in not resisting. But the light had already left her eyes, and she was gone.
Figs
In the Alchemist, Paulo Cuelo tells us “when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it”.
In 2012 my co-parent and I planted a fig tree, watered it, and hoped for figs. Year after year we watched it grow, but no figs ever ripened. One week ago, after waiting eleven years, we finally harvested our first basket of sweet figs.
Sometimes we humans are certain the world has forgotten about our hopes. So much time passes after we make our wish, that we ourselves often forget we even wished. We might even learn to stop wishing, and resign ourselves to a less than magical existence. All the while, the world doesn't stop working to give us what we need. Maybe it just takes time. If we wait, and remember, and then we look around with open hearts, we might see our most beautiful desires birthed right before our eyes.
Love
I took a walk today and I saw two snakes. In the dirt along the path, a bronze colored snake rested her head on a gray snake. I pang of sadness pierced my stomach as I gently touched the gray snake, just to be sure. He did not move. When the bronze snake saw me do this, she stuck her tiny forked tongue out at me, then twisted and curled herself around him for many seconds, finally settling into stillness and then looking away from me. Maybe she needed someone to know that he meant a great deal. I walked away, leaving her with only the distant sounds of children on the playground, at the other side of the woods. If all I could do was bear witness to a love and a loss, I hoped I bore it well.
A Gift from the Past
I was moving fast one morning in late August, when I stepped out of my car. Instead of placing my sunglasses folded into the cupholder as I usually do, I tossed them onto the top of the dashboard. When I returned five hours later, the sun was shining bright and the heat had quietly baked the sun glasses. I brought them to my face. From inside the tiny cracks of the worn out plastic, emanated a gift for me. These were my mom's sunglasses and I had taken them for myself after she died last year. The intensity of the suns rays had released the sweet smell of her hand lotion. I breathed it in with a feverish delight.
In a person's short life, there are few smells as life giving as the smell of a person's mama, long after she has gone. I sat happily in my car for some time, holding the sunglasses to my face, taking her in.
When Decluttering is Emotional
Sometimes we can approach a pile of stuff, pull out the meaningful items, and release the rest. I have worked with clients who had a clarity of decision making that astounded me. Much of the time though, parting with items is not so easy. We get terribly stuck and we give up. This is especially true when we are dealing with items we consider sentimental. Here, the story of the Golden Buddha might guide us.
Several hundred years ago there was a statue of a golden Buddha in Thailand. The country was being attacked, so several monks protected the statue from theft by covering it in twelve inches of clay. The statue stayed safe, but the monks did not, and the secret of the golden Buddha was lost. Two centuries later in the 1950's, the statue needed to be moved. Workmen tried to move it with a crane and the clay cracked, revealing a bright light shining from within. Bit by bit the clay was removed, revealing the beautiful, golden Buddha!
The story makes me think about how we can let go of belongings that are frought with emotion.
Recently I moved my elderly dad from my home into a small assisted living. I bagged his clothes to bring to his new room, and I put his furniture on my sidewalk to give away. I was left with a large pile of his sentimental items in the middle of my bedroom floor; photo albums, framed degrees, trinkets, etc. Over the next two weeks, I would spend one to two hours each evening going through the pile. Everyday I became more discerning and put a few more items in the trash or in the trunk of my car to give away. I also pulled photos from dozens of heavy albums, threw away some and kept the most special ones, consolidated in one box.
If I had tried to sort through the entire pile in one fell swoop, I might have been overwhelmed with guilt and given up. (These were my dad's lifelong treasures, after all.) As much as I have worked my decluttering muscles, I still needed to take this job in a "bit by bit of clay" kind of way, culling the pile a little more each day.
In the end, only the golden, most precious sentimental items remained. A manageable amount of things of which, I feel honored to be the family keeper.
The Dentist
Yesterday I took my seven year old to the dentist to have a cavity filled. He was in a happy mood on the drive. I did not know if he understood what was coming. When we arrived he lay down as instructed. He looked so fragile, his feet did not reach the part of the chair with the clear plastic, where your toe filled shoes go. He was wearing a bright blue shirt that nearly matched his eyes. He had buttoned the two buttons at the top of the shirt, and told me he wished there was a third button. In a world that can be scary for children, does an extra button make them feel safe?
The dentist put a mask over his nose and told him to breathe in. She worked on his tooth, talking all the while in an attempt to keep him calm. I watched quietly, noticing his small hands and dirty fingernails. He had laid his left hand on his heart, his right hand on his belly. When we are nervous it feels good to put our hands on our bodies for comfort.
After what felt like a long time, she finished. My son picked out a small rubber walrus from the treasure chest. I made a mental note about his choice; walrus’s are of course powerful creatures, carnivores with huge white tusks. When we got to the car he buckled in and then let out tears. He said the tears were about not being allowed to have chewy food for two hours, but I could see that he cried because the ordeal was finally over. It must have been scary, after all, to be in that big chair with a mouth full of sharp metal and a strange gas going into his nose. Now he was in the safety of our little gray cocoon, just him and mom.
I think it’s the same for grownups. We hold ourselves together in our day time lives. We have things to do and people to care for. Then late at night, we undo our two buttons, set aside our tough walrus, and in the safety of our beloveds arms, we let out all our tears.
Opening the Door
Many of us have more items in our possession than we want or need. We keep things we don’t use because we fear “I might need this”. In doing so, we trade freedom from excess and in exchange we get a salve for our fear. The fear that we won’t have what we need is often unfounded though, because we have other ways to meet our needs: we can borrow from neighbors when we need an item (people are usually nice if you are nice to them), and we can train our minds to be more resourceful with the items we do keep; learn to see a mason jar as a food container, a water vessel, or a flower vase.
When we have under our roof only the things we use or love, this means we are living among only our most treasured possessions. What a rich way to be! We think more clearly and we move our bodies with greater ease.
We have become so used to buying and holding on to things though, we often don’t see the extent of our hoarding and the headaches it causes. It is a massive breath of fresh air to liberate ourselves from the excess that we don’t want. The catch is that we alone must open the door to freedom from excess. No one can do it for us because, while others can help us with the physical act of decluttering, the greatest barrier is usually the fear in our own mind.
Making Hummus
I walk out of my front door and down three steps, skipping the middle step. The steps are painted turquoise but much of the paint has chipped off. I wear tight jeans and my black and red sweatshirt. I walk past the mosaic I made on my front walkway, and I notice the shiny green tiles with edges sharp enough to slice a tiny knee. When the weather is warm I will fill the sharp spaces on the mosaic with grout, as I have been meaning to do. Then it will be safer.
I turn left down the sidewalk and meander through the neighborhood for three blocks, until I get to the big, four lane road. I push the ‘walk’ button but I don’t wait for the light. Instead, I dash across the road when there are no cars coming. I walk past a small tire market and a sinkhole in the sidewalk, until I arrive at a brick building and a door to a tiny, unmarked hummus shop.
My work mate is already there and greets me with the same five words and the same accent as he does every day: “Hi Brooke! How you doing?” He’s been grinding chick peas alone for 30 minutes and my presence perks him up. I take over grinding while he moves toward the mixer. After enough time grinding and mixing, we have six huge buckets of hummus, ready to be packed into 8oz containers. He pours while I secure a lid on each one. We work fast but we don’t make a mess, he doesn’t like messes. We exchange a few words, sometimes about things like how my seven year old just lost his first tooth. Sometimes about painful things like the war in Ukraine, or how his country of origin committed atrocities against a neighboring country when he was young. Sometimes we are both tired at work because the troubles of life keeps our minds awake in the dark hours of night. Most of the time though, we feel good. Mostly we work under the beat of Bob Marley or Tom Petty and we let our mouths take a break from talking. Our work is repetitive and in this way it is a meditation for us both. We are a two person factory line creating food for the community. Our hands meditate and our minds follow.
The earthy smell of hummus fills the air and after a few hours we stop for five minutes to eat pickles, warm pita, and hummus with olive oil drizzled on. Nearly everyday we eat the hummus.
My work mate leaves around midday and I am alone in a small room, only the sound of a humming refrigerator remains. The sun has shifted and the room has a softer glow of light now. I sit for 45 minutes putting labels on containers. My body is getting tired after three hours on my feet, but my mind is calm and wanders happily to my children, my lover, my friends. I wonder what they are doing at this moment.
There was a time when I worked in a office. In this little yellow room, the world is still and I feel peaceful, as my hands do work of making and packaging food. My ego sometimes whispers things to me, things about how it’s about time to get back to an office job, the kind of job you are supposed to do. The kind of job your teachers told you you can dream of, because you can be anything you want to be when you are older.
My hands are busy working, and my heart is joyful. That is what I want to be when I am older; joyful.
Death and Stuff
My mom died suddenly and unexpectedly in March. I wrote a story, which I can share sometime, about how special she was. This is the story though, of death and stuff.
I have worked with many people since starting my declutter business six years ago. I see a distinct pattern: folks struggle with how to handle the belongings of a loved one who has passed. They fear they will lose memories of their loved one if they let go of items. Some of the struggle is guilt. They say “my dad liked his collection of (X), he would want me and my sister to have it, I cant just give it away”. So, people hold onto things they don’t want. They feel burdened by the stuff, which takes up a bedroom or sometimes an entire basement. I sense people need permission to let items go. In fact, we don’t need permission, we need only to change our mindset on how we view inanimate objects.
What if we all decided when we wake tomorrow that we will keep only in our possession the things we love or use? I wonder how lives might change if we all unburdened ourselves from “I should keep these things” thinking. I think we would play in forests with our kids more often, and travel to other countries. I think we would spend more time making love and hosting friends for hot meals.
When my mom died, I sold her car. I brought her furniture to our local thrift store. I sold her gold to a local jewelry store and brought her canned food to a food pantry. I put her many pretty dishes on the sidewalk for give away, and gave her wine glasses to the little cafe/bar where I work. I passed her beautiful plants and purple orchids to loved ones and strangers. I dropped her clothes and shoes into big yellow Planet Aid bins and I burned her old paper clutter in my fire pit.
It is hard work dealing with so many items all at once. Sometimes I would think to myself, what a monster you are Brooke, to give all of her things away! I think it is much harder on a person though, to hold onto things which will grow dust in an attic and be neither used nor appreciated. It is much harder on a person to lack the living space they want in their home.
I did keep a few pieces of my moms gold jewelry, some peace lily’s, a white lasagna pan with little orange mushrooms painted on the side, her treasured box of recipes, and the shirt she was wearing before she died, which still smells like her.
Maybe you hold onto things which don’t bring you joy, out of a sense of obligation. I invite you to consider letting those things go. You are allowed to free yourself. You are allowed to hold onto a persons essence, (and none of their belongings) inside your heart.
Rethinking Showers
When a woman in the US is pregnant, one of the typical responses by friends and family is to throw a baby shower. Mom-to -be creates an online registry and everyone buys her stuff. You know the story because maybe you have been to a shower or had one yourself. Its true, some things are helpful to have when a new baby arrives. A car seat, diapers, clothes, and a sling, to name a few. But so many items thrust at new moms are extraneous. They become clutter and clutter sometimes becomes overwhelm and anxiety at home. I know this pattern because I have worked with dozens of people and I see how clutter brings them down. I also see how that pattern is hard to avoid because we have a culture that’s very good at injecting fear into moms, specifically when it comes to consumerism. Ie; buy stuff or baby will suffer!
What about finding better ways to show love to a new mom than buying out the entire Buy Buy Baby? I propose its time we adopted a new norm. I say we shower mothers with our loving presence over the months. So many new moms are lonely because their family lives far away. When they’ve had their fill of company, bring them homemade food. Once their belly is full and happy, give them cold, hard cash so they can buy a few of those items that they actually need.
When Someone Dies
Sometimes, when someone dies, you will still feel the warmth radiating from their smooth skin. You will hold their head in your hands and touch their feathery, white hair. You will kiss their pale forehead.
Sometimes when someone dies, you will tell them its ok. They cant hear you, but you will say through choked screams and tears that we love you and we are here. You dont want them to be afraid. Sometimes it is you who is afraid.
Sometimes when someone dies, doctors and nurses will try to bring them back to life. You will see their attempts but you will become like a wild animal, protecting your loved one from interference. You will guard the dying process of the beautiful earthling, because you know death has already set in. You will release them peacefully into the arms of black nothingness.
Hummingbird
If you’ve ever watched a hummingbird, you know they flutter their wings so fast they appear as if from out of nowhere, dance around briefly, then disappear all together. Playful looking creatures, like fairies joyfully bouncing around the forest as they please.
On a Saturday in late January I felt like a hummingbird. I ran down a mountain trail in Shanendoah, going so fast I was nearly flying. I experienced an intensity of freedom as I felt the rush of winter air on my face and saw the trees and sky as blurs of blue and brown in my periphery. My body was light and my mind was in the trance of the moment. Two thirds of the way down the mountain I slipped on a rock and crashed down. Dirt and leaves in my hair, I lay crying in pain for several minutes. A downed hummingbird who injured her wing.
On several occasions I was greeted by kind hikers who stopped to check on me. After some time, my friend helped me to my feet and walked me hand in hand down to the base of the mountain. I felt the physical discomfort of sprained tendons behind my kneecap and a wound which would receive stitches. More than the pain though, was a depth of warmth from the care I was given. From the soft glances of the hikers to the treatment that would later be given by a gentle doctor, and most of all the love from my friend. I was wrapped and penetrated with warmth.
Ten days later, I’m nearly completely healed. My experience was a beautiful reminder that we can only fly to the boundless places of playfulness and joy because we are tethered to the love of others. We can dance through the cold air like wild hummingbirds because of the humans who catch us when we fall.
Move a Room to Jumpstart Decluttering
Recently I rearranged a room in my home. It was an enjoyable project because the goal was to create for myself a peaceful space. The end result was not just a beautiful spot, but a clearing out of several unnecessary items. That’s because when I’m forced to pick an item up and move it from one room to another, I tend to be more discerning about if I truly want it. Why move a shirt from one closet to another when I stopped liking the shirt over a year ago? A few other things happen when we shift around a space in our home:
We find something we’d been looking for
We discover the hidden cobwebs and give everything a good cleaning
We may find mold or mouse droppings and we can fix a small issue before it becomes a bigger one
We create momentum and a fresh energy around our new, cleared space, and we set it up the way we want it. Intentional living rather than a default existence.
If you too have an itch to move some things around and clear the clutter, I say go for it. Our lives are always changing, our living space should accommodate those lives!
Once in a Lifetime
In mid November I hiked Sugarloaf mountain with a special friend. About one third of the way up the mountain we stopped, I don’t recall why. After a couple of minutes we heard rustling in the distance and thought it was a lost dog coming up the hill. As three deer sauntered closer, we realized the small, white animal was no dog at all. She was a rare piebald deer. Mostly white with brown spots on her back and face, these ghosts of the forest are said to occur just once in every thirty thousand deer. She was trailing behind a doe, and flanked by a large buck. My friend and I stood in complete awe. Jaws dropped, hearts racing, we knew this was likely a once in a lifetime sighting. We did not take a picture, rather we stood almost motionless, taking in the moment with every cell in our bodies. The moment was brief, as the family of deer ran off in a new direction, white fur disappearing down a slope of leafless trees.
Such an experience certainly leaves a person wonderstruck. What where the chances that I would have been standing in that spot at that time? Why was I so lucky? There is a deep sense of gratitude for having witnessed a life so beautiful and rare. As I reflected over the days and weeks, I kept thinking that yes, the sighting was rare, but what if I saw all of the moments of my life as completely unique? When we hug a friend, kiss a lover, breathe in the smell of our child’s hair, we are experiencing distinctive moments. Though we may hug that friend or kiss that lover again, the moments will be different each time. Like watching a single leaf fall from a tree top, we know that we will never again see that leaf fall from that tree, onto that spot of earth. What if we learned to be so wise, and so full of gratitude, that we didn’t assume things will always come. Instead, we could learn to see each life affirming moment for what it is: a gift. A ghost of the forest.
The Death of a Sibling
My phone rings on a Sunday morning. I am at the farmers market. It’s November; there are tables covered with apples in various shades of red. The sky is clear and the air is cool and bites when the wind blows. The surrounding trees have lost many of their leaves. A baby is nestled in a cotton sling which suspends from my shoulders. The baby has fuzzy brown hair and over-sized blue eyes. Walking every which way are people. The people are mostly strangers. My phone rings and I say hello, then listen to the voice on the other end. I drop to my knees. Legs, after all, cannot be expected to bear the weight of a message like that. I ask if I can come see him, but his body has already been taken away.
Justin loved the sun and the water. He liked the taste of cantaloupe, and to catch fish from a boat. He didn't much like winter.
The Warmth of Being Together
This morning my six year old didn’t want to do his zoom kindergarten class. I told him it was OK. He logged on anyway, but thirty minutes into laying in front of the computer, he closed the screen and said he wanted to be finished with school for the morning.
We spent the next ninety minutes lovingly working together. He swept little piles of crumbs and dust around the dining room as I prepared the mop bucket. We took turns wiping the table and spraying it with our vinegar, water, tea tree oil solution, we folded a basket of laundry, and cleaned the front porch. He was so diligent in the activities, giving care to do each job well. As we worked we spoke very little, focusing on our task and relishing in the happy movement of our hands. (Waldorf teachers love to say that busy hands are happy hands). A few times I stopped to watch him. Once he caught me stealing a glance, and he looked up with his enormous blue eyes. Someone once told me the entire universe is in his eyes. I didn’t understand what she meant, maybe something about everything being interconnected. I felt full of warmth when we locked eyes.
Even as I sit here now, writing, he sits next to me with a royal blue composition book on his lap. His legs are crossed at the ankle, just barely hanging off the edge of the couch. He is writing too; he’s taken a ‘Happy Halloween’ pencil and filled a page with letters, in no particular order.
So here we are. He didn’t do what he was supposed to do, but exactly what he needed. Sometimes children know what’s best for them. Or, at the very least, they know what’s best for us.
Apoptosis and our Lives
Apoptosis: a genetically directed process of cell self destruction. A programmed cell death that occurs in multicellular organisms.
I recently had a conversation where I learned about apoptosis. Essentially, we have certain cells in our bodies which perform necessary functions and then die. By dying, these cells allow our bodies and our life to continue. In fact, when cells stick around they are referred to as unwanted cells, some of which might try to grow unabated (this is called cancer). So, we know that our bodies only work if cellular death regularly occurs.
Just as death is an important part of existence in our physical bodies, so too is it necessary for life on earth. We can observe the process of constant death of plants everyday. Right now leaves are falling outside. Decaying matter goes back into the soil and nourishes new growth. Vegetation only comes because of all of the death which preceded it.
I've worked with people who struggled to release items from their possession because the item was once very life giving to them. By the time the person finds me, most of those items are no longer life giving, but the they still feel uncomfortable letting go. If we find ourselves in this scenario we can take a moment to see how the item or book has already given us what we need to get from it. Then we can let it go. The words of the book we once loved live in us, they have already shaped our worldview. The sentimental item that was handed down to us out of love served its purpose when we received it. So, we breathe in that love and release the item.
When I look back at different moments of my past, I see little deaths scattered throughout my life, and times when I had to release something. I have experienced things that did not go as I planned. A hope I once had is forced to die. We can often sense the death coming before it actually comes, and we fight, because we don't want to lose the thing we need. In my own experience, it's only now that I can look back and see how rich my life is, that I know the death of previous parts of my life were necessary for the current life I have. The soil only became fertile because of losses I experienced, and the room which was created for new fruits to blossom because space opened. When I learn to let go of things that are no longer meant for me, I continue to learn how to grieve. Once I grieve, I can turn toward the new life that wants to grow all around me. What a painful process! A painful, stunningly life giving process.
The Expiration of Everything
When I touch my face I can feel the spots that sag by my jawline. Eventually the skin will hang a bit lower than the bone. The skin on my neck has thinned and feels somewhat wrinkly to the touch. Thick clumps of gray streak through my hair on both sides. My breasts hang lower than they used to. I even notice differences in my toes. They are so slight that no one else would notice, but I notice because sometimes I just stare at my toes, doesn’t everyone do that?
When I was young we had a dog. She aged and eventually died. She expressed no shame about her aging body. Near the end she seemed physically uncomfortable, but she was not embarrassed that her body was expiring and her time was close to over.
We live in our bodies for a finite time. There are laws in nature, our bodies follow the laws. I feel no more shame for my aging body than I feel for the aging earth who will likely be swallowed by the sun. We are not meant to be here forever. Our time in our bodies is finite, the time of humans living on earth is finite, and even the earth’s time is finite. There is no shame in the laws of physics, no shame in the constant changing of everything.
Stars in Oz
August, 2018
It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society" - Eastern philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti
I've been slowly reading through a book. I take each page and each chapter with care, because of the profundity of the books message and because of the way nonfiction takes time for my mind and body to digest. The book is "Lost Connections" by Johann Hari, and it is about the causes of depression. Hari believes a great many people are suffering, not because they have a brain that functions improperly, but because they are disconnected. People are disconnected from other people, from nature, from a hopeful future, and even from their own childhood trauma. I'm sitting with the weight of what I've read so far, which works well because I've also been sitting with some of my own pain lately. There is often a deep sadness in being a human on this earth. Here we are, hurtling through space and we are not sure what to do about it all. There is so much suffering. Everyone is doing their best, and no one has all of the answers.
Woven with this sadness that is inherent in all of us is a deep beauty. Alan Watts says: "You're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are." He goes on to say that we have separated ourselves from the universe and we have come to see ourselves on a more individual level. I think about my moments of being utterly in awe at the beauty of existence. I once fell to my knees when I woke in the middle of the night in the Australian outback, because stars were so bright and abundant. I had no idea the sky could look like that and the intensity of the light shined straight through me until I crouched down, staring into the cosmos. I cowered in fear while snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef as I tried to take in the underwater world that was like another planet full of its own alien creatures swimming along in near silence. I cried tears of joy as I lay on my bed with my first born child, just hours old, nursing from my body, as my partner handed me food and water. I am even in awe when I think about the hard work I've watched loved ones take on, in their effort to move past their own trauma. I am in awe at the way we can love one another, and forgive one another.
Sometimes our souls are asleep and we don't feel anything. We can be like robots in our existence, slaves to a bigger system that does not serve us. So many people are unhappy. Our society is broken and its only natural that we are sad. I believe that the things which make us happy are known to us, deep in our bodies, if we listen. We need connection. Today I will stay awake to the suffering of other people, so that I can love them more fully. I will stay connected with the natural world and with others, both friends and strangers. I will sit with the intertwined sadness and joy that is everywhere.
The Art of Being Naked
February 2020
I recently spent an afternoon at Spa World. Once you arrive and disrobe, you enter a wide, open room. There is a large pool in the center of the room. Shower heads and bars of soap pepper the front wall, while hot tubs of varying degrees are nestled along the far wall. The floor and wall are covered with tile, and the air is warm and steamy. There is a murmur of women's voices everywhere, as well as a louder rhythm beating; a fountain crashes hard into the middle of the pool. The room is full of people wearing only an orange, waterproof bracelet given to each of us upon entry. The bracelet is attached to a key which opens our locker; the portal back into the land of the clothed.
As I enter through glass doors, the sight of skin bathes my eyes. Never have I seen so much skin. A lightness enters my heart, as I soak up the beauty that surrounds me. Human animals are stunning. My friends and I walk to the far side of the room and sink our bodies down to our necks in hot water. We smile at each other, and at strangers, including a familiar, chubby baby. The next several hours are spent without barriers of body or soul. Being naked together easily ushers us into conversation about what it means to belong. It invites questions like 'how often do you cry?' and it lures us into a large common area where we share in a bowl of beans, ice shavings, and sweet syrup. We lay in a hot room where amethyst covers a rounded ceiling, all the way down to the ground. We are warm and happy.
The sun begins to set outside and our time together is coming to an end. I wish for such disarming connection for others. I quietly ask the universe to bring me more opportunities to perfect the art of being naked.