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This quarantine has made me think of being apart. It was inevitable I suppose for an introspective heart like mine to eventually wander here. Truthfully I am surprised it took this long. In moments like these I seek out familiar things. Movies and music that will reverberate the echoes of my heart. I have written before of my Cairo Time.

I decided to lay my head and drift to the land of sand and pyramids and Umm Kulthum. Before I could find my way to Tareq I found an interview with the writer of the film. She talked about the pace of American love and romance, that need we seem to have for instant gratification. How important it was for her that the film reflect the languid pace of sometimes falling in love.

The irony to me is in 90 mins I fell in love with Tareq and Juliette and they with each other. The very things that should have pushed them away from each other, endeared them. It was not love at first sight. Instead it was built over experience and shared intimate moments. When I see Juliette I wonder how long she had waited for those moments of intimacy. Had she settled in her life to live without them or had they once been and simply faded. What of Tareq, him whose heart seems to closely reflect mine. Hidden and surviving till someone brings them the breath from their lungs. Choosing solitude to settling.

I have quarantined my heart, but not my body. I move about in the crowds. I sit down for dinner, drinks and conversation but my heart remains in a faraday cage.

I told someone tonight that I had locked it away from the world and from those who might break it in their desire to hold it. Even I can’t be trusted with her, having been so careless in the past. But as the house begins to settle with the contents of me within I can’t help but take the elevator down into the deep levels below and see if now I might be able to pull her out and let the electricity revive her.

In the dark I sit and wait to hear the flatline change. But it doesn’t. Instead the hymns of Cairo play and I return to the surface.

What’s happening in my heart is so complicated. As with so many things in my life, I had an image of what this little trip would be and instead I was forced to re imagine it en route. For so long I have dreamed of fields and mountains which stood in stark opposition to the landscape of my life. I had hoped to share the awakening with someone important but instead I was left on my own.

How do you reconcile a heart with cracks with a filling of the soul that seems…I don’t even know the word to suit…endless perhaps. Part of my heart is broken and the other is being filled.

My first time in Ireland I felt this ease this finally home feeling that was replicated somewhat this weekend. I kept thinking of all the things we were supposed to do together and instead it’s me looking out of the floor to ceiling windows alone.

I’ve lived so much of this life in this perpetual state of solitude. Many times of my own making but more often than not because the higher power I have entrusted at least most of the time my life too has deigned it to be.

Being here in this city. I’ve appreciated the dichotomy of being filled yet with a hole in the bucket dear Liza.

Expectations are for fools I am finding to be true. Shall I live no longer expecting. Or expecting only from myself. Yet all I seem to be able to ask is…what’s wrong with me. Am I so undesirable that not even my money can bring people by my side.

I can no longer spend time thinking of this instead I realign myself to the story that was born in this city. Born from the need to create conflict that I can at least resolve.

To my last night in a city filled with promise, love, lust and more stories.

“The most painful state of being is remembering the future.” Kierkegaard

I sit beneath the moon whose light feels brighter than the sun. Confronted with something I have likened to love but is in reality true care and friendship. I have confused the two and the pain comes each time I realize my error. You cannot be the hero of my story. He would move the mountains to be by my side. I have allowed myself to continually take counterfeit love in the hope that my heart would not tell the difference. I was once told the only way to tell a counterfeit is to spend time studying the real item.

I am cheating myself by leaving the only part of my heart that I control in a gilded cage and you with the only key. Love does not desire bars but rather the crags and moors where it can reveal itself in the hidden places and protect itself in the open fields.

I have tried hardening my heart and closing my eyes but the love that springs forth like a well from within needs a bowl to fill. But my eyes are scarred and see only what they desire and not the truth. What is one to do when all they desire is sight and all they have is blindness.

I must rely on my other senses those that are not as easily betrayed.

Just like that I’m back on my Emerald Isle. It seems fitting on my fifth trip to return to the heart of my first. The place, the one that told me I could. Ireland is not just a place, for me it is a beating heart beat, a shoulder when tears fall, a mountain back when threatened and an escape on its blue waters when needed.

Bringing her was the only way back. I had fallen in love not just with travel but with the quaint homes, vast feels and loving people that hid in the green and yellow of the hills. I think she feels it too. It’s an ease and a comfort that has no name our American tongue knows. There was a part of me that wasn’t sure how I would feel when I returned. I would I still be a foreigner or would I be coming home. As the plane hovered above the green fields, the tarmac lurking somewhere beneath us I felt the familiar pull into myself.

There is this thing that happens when your phone crosses borders, in airplane mode it stays in the time and place where it last connected. That whole plane ride you are still back there, it is in it’s own way a limbo. You are nowhere and yet every mile passed is a piece of land or ocean that you cross. However when the plane lands and you eagerly remove your airplane restriction soon you find the familiar name in the top corner has changed and with it the hours you once counted on. This is how I felt as the plane landed in Dublin. My soul connected to the network and the memory of who I was here last time, the heart that bursted forth, soon she was beating once again within my chest.

Ok enough of my pensive hieroglyphs….Last time I was here in Ireland I traveled the first day from Dublin down to County Cork, more specifically to where I truly left a piece of me…Gallan Mor. I drove the west coast of Ireland heading north. When it was decided that my darling mother would join me on this adventure I knew I wanted part of this to be new to us both. Yesterday when we landed in Dublin and picked up our car we headed in the absolute opposite direction. North to Belfast ending in Portrush and a little road called “Berne Ave”. Pronounced the way my mother pronounces her name “Berni”. It had been sitting here waiting for us. Crunching on the gravel road and taking our seat in the lot behind the house. Exhausted and quite hungry we trudged up the drive and rang the doorbell. It was a tense couple of days before our arrival to our first B&B, miscommunications had attempted to taint my relationship with my host but when that door open and her voice spoke with that accent I love so much, everything faded and I was safe and cared for. The cynicism I had thought of her with had stayed behind. After a little chat in the foyer we were shown our bedroom and rest was no longer a distant possibility it was barely 5 feet from my grasp. Soon my tummy reminded me of its patience and how it would soon end.

“Drive down to the T Junction and make a right and just drive straight down to the beach. You’ll see Harry’s on the right….go ahead and park right on the beach” she said as she called down to see if Connor could squeeze a place for us. As we drove onto the beach and the oncoming water I couldn’t help but think of the song “Pave paradise and put up a parking lot”. Anyone who has been on here for any length of time and read my Ireland and Scotland adventures knows that one of my favorite parts of these countries is their respect for their land. They somehow innately know they are the guests, they are the caretakers of the land, not its master. Their reverence etched into every bush fence and wildflowers growing unchecked thru the asphalt. Those flowers represent so much of IReland to me, this resolve to not be weighed down by the advancements of the world around them but instead to find the cracks in its system and burst thru, if for no other reason than to maintain the heritage of steadfastness. Has anyone else noticed these long tangents I can go on…somehow never getting to the original purpose. Let’s find our way back. We parked on the beach just below Harry’s and with boots on our feet we climbed the cold wet sand up till it met the wooden stairs that led to our supper. A cold lager was all I really needed to fill my tummy as the warm sun still high in the sky shined on me…really just me. We finished our dinner and headed back to the beach to the car, promising a return to the restaurant in the days we have here.

Soon we pulled into the gravel drive of our temporary home and finally found the rest that had eluded us for 20 hours. The bed cold and soft and filled with the smell of cleanliness cuddled us as the quiet of the down descended upon us and soon sweet sleep was all that we had.

I write these words right after breakfast on Thursday the 29th. I’ve needed this vacation, here, this way for awhile and I don’t want to rush. I want to sit here at the picture window looking out at the cars parked along the sidewalk, the old man with their umbrellas and the ladies with their pups of the human and canine variety strolling past. Tomorrow is for exploring out, today is for taking care of what is within.

I started the evening as I have many times before, sitting in the dark and waiting. Waiting for the ton of bricks to come down upon me and shock me into this next year of life. Instead the words that I wrote became less a proclamation and more of the concealment of a matter. What follows is my inability to keep even this private of an understanding to myself. I could not live the word transparency more.

I’ve never understood the phrase. “Another turn around the sun”. This idea that the sun is the focal point of my ever change fullness . The moon seems a more accurate companion for me. My the lessons this turn has taught me.

As is typical of the darkest moment of the night coming before the dawn so also has been the darkest moments before this turn has reached its end. Learning to accept the loss of life of those I have cared for and even still the loss of who I once was and who I once might have loved. The door creeps open as I step into the woman whose skin is fresh and new. I have learned the strength within myself, the deep love and support of others and most importantly self control. I am learning still now in the stillness of the night air how dangerous desires are when they are given into with reckless abandon.

Abandon. A word which has wielded so many meanings for me. I read somewhere the word in its original form carried in it a sense of ” put something under someone else’s control”. It seems the instinctive action I had was correct but the someone else part has been wrong all along. I have given control to those who have desired to exercise it for their own desires. Until now…now when I have found you who refuses to take the reins and instead points me to a perfect being whose control is without malice and perfectly timed. Perhaps this is why I feel so safe with you, perhaps this is why my heart cries out it must be love.

But to love as we are now would only prove us to be earthen vessels with cracks too big to contain what lies within. So I must re-examine the authority to who I will “abandon” my desires too. Upon reflection I realize there is no one other than God who could direct me so gently down paths I wish not to walk upon. So as I begin this new turn around the moon, around my savior I say ” I abandon my scheme of happiness.” it is not a desertion in the sense of hope being lost but rather a realiZation that I am incapable to achieving it or even finding it by myself.

I can see the fruits of this year already beginning and unlike previous birthdays I find myself eager and up for the challenge. I don’t know what this looks like and I can’t imagine how many times I will fail but I know the only way to get closer is one decision at a time.

It is no longer the eve of my 30 something birthday. It is here the moon glows and urges me to sleep and find the sun and allow it guide me for this turn.

How is it your not here?

Why is it I must ask this question again?

It’s been awhile since I felt this loss. I was just starting to normalize. I just saw you. I felt your hug and smelled you.

I’ve tried to not think of you this week. There have been moments of the day when your name floats in my head and I push it away like a bad dream. Your still somewhere drinking a screwdriver. I miss you my Wacko. I miss hugging you. I miss the stories we would share over rainbow shots.

I met your daughter today…she is you. So much of who she is wrapped up in you. I pray for her heart. I pray for the moments when she is alone in her bed and thinks of her papi.

What do we do now ?

Thank you. Thank you for all that you taught me, about myself, about father’s, about men.

I think now of what you won’t be here for. Her wedding. My own. I think of the interrogation you might have put him thru, making sure he was good enough.

No it’s not fair you can’t be gone. Please come back. Please hug me one more time.

It doesn’t seem fair that so much is gone, when really there is so little left.

The tears won’t stop flowing and I can’t explain who you were to me. Not even to myself. Somehow I love you and I don’t even know when or what color of the rainbow is happened on. I hope your in peace, I hope you are waiting where one day I can see you again.

Thank you for all that you gave me it was more than I could have expected sitting on a rotting bar stool.

I stepped out of the shower today and stood in front of the foggy mirror for awhile. Trying to make myself out in the distortion. I stood until slowly the fog turned into sweat dripping down and soon I emerged. I realized how often I look in the mirror but I never really look at myself. I am always so focused on my imperfections that thru the years it has become difficult to find beauty. Even as the moment came where I wanted to look away I knew I could not. I looked into my own eyes and I saw pain and anger but as the seconds passed soon I saw the woman that others have seen. I saw courage, a desire to persevere and beauty.

I stepped out to the darkness the garden offered in the hopes of getting this out. Out of me and onto a place where I no longer curl up with it. I love being in the dark, not because of the stillness that darkness offers but rather clarity. See after a few minutes in the dark what used to be indecipherable now has its angles of definition, our eyes begin to adjust. But it requires ambient light. I think of my life in the darkness and those who I have been fortunate to have around me that have given me of their light to help define the lines that I have found so difficult to find. For years I have been trying albeit perhaps not genuinely hard to get out of the darkness, and yet as I sit here in it I realize those things I hate are the beauty that stared back at me thru the mirror. But it is only now as my eyes adjust I am able to see that.

This year will mark the fifth year of my annual trip. I am trying to remember who was that woman who had looked at complacency and called its bluff. She is inside of me and I have allowed myself to suppress her. I need to push the status quo again. To no longer be satisfied with my own unhappiness. To instead look at the opportunity to expand to change the scenery and the goal. I have always been that woman who has believed that the job, house, husband and children would give me the happiness I so longed for. I was sure they would bring the fullness that has been so far from me for as long as I can remember. But the truth is there is fullness in my life right now but the bright sun has caused my hands to cover my eyes and bump into everything other than the freedom I actually had. In this stillness I can feel the fullness. Who knew I would find light in the blackout.

It seems that fog is this necessary part of the ecosystem that God has created. So often my life seems full of fog. I remain unable to see in front of me or even that which stands within me. My blessings and the love of those around me. I have allowed a fog to hover above those things. This fog of past hurts and lies I have refused to refute with truth.

I sit in my wicker chair a large blanket draping me and I see that the fog has taken its leave from my mind and now sits out on the Sound where only the ever changing water is hidden. It is here that clarity has come. I am relinquishing ownership. I no longer wish to carry the perpetuation of the lies that I have believed so long. And yet even in that statement there is a lie. I knew they were lies but they had become part of my routine. Wash face, moisturize, believe items I know to be lies- go to work.

The hardest part of today is realizing and accepting my blame in these matters. The pain is no longer from my abuse but from the decisions I have continually made from the place of fear, control and desire. I feel ashamed and angry that I have allowed myself to go so far and so deep.

For so long sleep has eluded me. In a very real way I have been unable to calm my mind and provide enough security to allow myself to relax and descend into the dark tranquil facet of the night. I have robbed myself of the very regeneration I have needed. I realize now that all those man made creations have been unable to calm me because I my battle has not been against just my flesh but rather the mind that I have listed for rent to a war zone.

I’ve been sitting with this concept of transfiguration. This idea that something wrought with pain and sadness can be transfigured into a pillar or proof of love and truth. Yet as the water washes upon the shore I am sure of this possibility. This definition I have written for myself is written in pencil, able to be erased and instead the truth able to be etched in stone with a chisel and patience. I am grateful for my desire for solitude for it has brought me to an understanding of companionship not offered by man.

A new day awaits me in just a few hours, even in the thickest night I can see it somewhere on the horizon. For once I don’t fear it and its uncertainty. For once I am taking comfort and solace in the truth that I don’t know what time is. I don’t know what the future is but I am holding tightly to it.

In the tongue and groove of this ceiling I have found the truth that was always etched in my heart. Soon the organ will play and my heart will soar.

As I roam upon this land that was created I find these pockets of myself as if they had been hidden from the beginning of time, this lifelong Easter egg hunt.

In his resurrection I find my own.