our dreams will break the boundries of our fear

and we're caught in the crossfire of heaven and hell
and we're searching for shelter
[lay your body down]

this song is a dead ringer for black belt training. I have never been so soundly beaten. I have never been so alive. the other day, C. floated through the air an extra four inches to collide solidly on a double-jumping kick. I had no doubt that would happen. I have taken to leaping into the falls, to twisting in flight, to landing with a crash that rings through the spaces in me.

I have taken to believing in chi because I think it helps me. There is a hundred-yard stare, a moment of focus, a deep breath. And then there is pure and fluid action, no contemplation, no abstractions, just movement. There is great comfort in doing one thing and one thing only. And I rely on lots of things when I am constantly told to be more intense, to be faster, to be more.

I reflect on riding, on the electricity surging through my horse as we approach a challenging jump, at the way his nostrils flare huge when the adrenaline hits him, at the moment when I give him his head and the energy roars through him, freeing us from the ground in a single unbroken motion. With him it is never pushing or rushing, it is letting flow what has been held back. His unflagging enthusiasm inspires me every day.

The rest of my life is fairly ordinary, but these two things that I do are the things that define me, the enduring and important ways for me to brush the extraordinary. And then we land, coming off the oxer, coming out of the kick or the throw, just hoping it was enough.

music of the current moment:
Brandon Flowers / Caught in the Crossfire
Pink / Raise Your Glass
Glee cover / Teenage Dream
Carbon Leaf / Learn to Fly

après moi vient le sang

Well hello, January. What a winter of cold and snow and reflective sunshine.

As you probably don't remember, I spent a lot of high school in a philadelphia (the state of mind, not the state, unfortunately). I am recalling now some very good advice I was given, though I didn't want to hear it at the time. It went thusly: that you can never be friends with your former lovers until you don't want to be friends anymore. I always figured that at that point, the question had quite solved itself.

But being the late-evening internet wanderer that I am, I go meandering altogether too freely through old communications, emails and transcripts of conversations (shouldn't the universe conspire to delete those for me?) altogether too often.

And being my particularly astute self, I managed to dig up the only line that could make me think that oh yes of course if I broke this rule just once it would be fine. Because ruining my past relationships has not satisfied me, and I have to wander into a dubious space with my current one.

I detest uncertainty.