Originally it was a way to stay connected to a country and a family that I left for a while.  And it remained that for a while because I am awful with the phone and because my words seem to come out truer when they aren't said aloud.  And then it was to keep me writing.  It was simple and basic and really, it was whatever I wanted it to be and I needed something to be exactly that.  It was fifteen minutes a day.  It was a recording.  An exercise.  A quiet, old reminder.  It was not my journal.  It did not replace the stack of books I have filled with pencil.  But it was something in the middle and I appreciated its middleness.

Now my mother reads it and maybe an old boyfriend and occasionally my grandparents.

And it is almost gone.  A lot of things are almost gone it seems and when I sit down to do even this minimal, small bit I have no idea where to start or to go or who to be here.

I could report:

Husband is gone, flew away on a plane he helped design (smarty pants) and is testing the flammability of interiors and plane chunks in the lovely Midwest.  Since he is gone, I have alternated between laying in bed while watching black and white movies and eating chocolate to going to the gym and glaring that old man in the Hawaiian shirts off my machine.  I have also killed the poinsettia in the bathroom.

I could experiment:

And this desert silence invades the mountain so that while it is happy content and it is love growing, it is cold silent.  I find I have not been here before.  I have not sat in His lap while denying His presence and I have not disregarded Love with so plain deliberation.

I could confess:

The silence goes both directions or maybe it only comes from me.  I am full of blessings, surrounded by love and contentedness and still I am restless and stubborn and sinning.  I know Him and I don't move towards Him?  I feel love on me and I don't return it?  I don't.  Purposefully?  Not quite.  But is carelessly any better?

I could post smiling pictures
I could say only the nice things
I could stop
I could restart

Still, I am not sure
But I do hate goodbyes.