Magical Doors...

... to other worlds

are only an imagination's

 leap away. 

Leave Your Sleep...

I love the idea of crossing imaginary boundaries.
To smell the color blue
or taste the flavor sadness.
To feel a distant sound
or listen to a lonely weed.
To love an enemy
or trip on a feeling,
that feeling
the one that gives you grief
holding it up to the light to take away its power.
And poetry?
why of course it needs to be sung...
shan't we all leave our sleep at least one day a moon?

To Look Up for Flowers

Your feet shuffle along the small town old American sidewalk, your hands buried inside your fleece jacket. You see lone weeds squeezing themselves up between the cracks and since you feel nice today you don’t stomp on them. After all, you remind yourself, weeds can one day be flowers, too. And you like flowers. At least today.

So you look up. Maybe you missed some flowers? But all you see is a great big building. It has a fancy name but you don’t need to read it. You already know what it is. It’s been there since about the time your father was born. It's old. And brick. Then, as you ponder this silly thought, like a gift, you trip. A tree root jumbled up the sidewalk in a place you didn’t expect. And you fall.

If you hadn’t fallen, you might not have looked anywhere but forward. If you hadn’t listened to your heart, you might have just continued to walk with your head down, avoiding the root and the fall altogether. But you didn’t. You looked up for flowers. And sometimes, as I am sure someone's grandma used to say, falling can be a blessing in disguise.

The patch of grass is bright and dew-strewn green. The poppies are a vibrant Chinese red and you swear they are laughing. The door is purple. The most rich and velvet purple you have ever seen. And behind that door, the door you might have missed had you not fallen, is a house of magic and a family….are you ready for this…of love. To think you might have missed all this had you not looked up for flowers today!

But we shan't think of that any more. Nope. We want to get inside.

You didn’t know your windshield desperately needed you to push the lever to 'defrost'. You didn’t even realize you were gazing through a fog. Until, you walked in…

My words are little black squiggles on this gooey plastic screen and I will freely admit that they are only capable of dancing around the magic I felt that day. I may be a writer but as daddy always said, no one, not even he, can make a coon dog sing.

Little black squiggles...speak:

Colors. Shapes. Imaginariums for my eyes and creativarians for my soul. What is that I feel swirling around my head, laughing and twirling and pumping my heart up so big that I think I must cry? A little boy with a sparkle trailing behind him like a comet, giggles as he runs by. His mama, following behind him, reminds him to tuck in his wings, that guests have arrived and not everyone understands. She smiles at me when she sees my wet eyes. 'On second thought,' she says like an angel herself, 'let them flutter.' But he already knew.

Sometimes we fall in order to meet unexpected, beautiful gifts. But may I remind you? Of what, you quietly say? That the only real fall is when we forget to open our hearts to see the treasures, the magic that has always been there waiting for us to remember it. Thank you, Kristin. Thank you for all your magic, for all your love. I'm soOO glad I fell.

My Favorite Things

Back in the States after being gone for quite a while feels fresh and alive...and fun! People move faster, lights seem brighter, there's new stimulation when we drive by houses and shopping malls and playground packed parks. New faces and feelings, expectations and understoods. There are new electronics, new tv shows, new cars and running shoes and stand up scooters. And me? I feel like all I do is smile and stare and smile some more---in my car, pushing Sofia in the shopping cart, pumping gas, even when we take lazy walks in this beautiful, flower-laden American small town. And maybe, just maybe I make a few smiles myself. I know I gave one. To the bus driver. I was rocking away, singing my heart out in the car and saw him watching me right before I turned. He was chuckling. Chuckling as he drove his bus load of worker bees to their jobs and homes and friends. What a nice man. I'm sure of it.

Some of my new favorite things this week, things that made me smile:

1. Small town American ingenuity: A man mowing his lawn with a riding lawn mower. He mounted a big plush seat from a car onto his riding lawn mower. To ride in comfort! I am still smiling…

2. Annie Chun's Seaweed Snacks: I love how they melt like tissue paper in my mouth. Instant smile. Oh, and they taste salty-delicious, too!

3. New toothpaste: Have you met Natura yet? It’s a new toothpaste that comes in a little bottle with an eye dropper. Liquid packed yum! You can use it like a breath freshener, too. Either way, it's all natural smiles for your tongue!

4. Shelled hemp seed: with the price of pine nuts these days, here is my answer to the craving. They come in tiny bags and have 2000 mgs. of Omega 3's, and all 10 essential amino acids. And best of all, I LOVE the texture and flavor!

5. Bookstores: To walk into a big store with shelves and shelves of paper covers holding even more paper inside, with all of those papers covered in words, creative ideas squished into little rectangular squares…is pure delight. Sometimes, if I stand really quietly I think I can hear the words transforming themselves into voices, swirling like letter clouds, pirouetting throughout the store. Oh, how I miss bookstores down in Mexico. If you can't find me here on my blog, you will surely find me there, nose in a book.

Ok, so after you watch the bonus video, it's your turn! What gave you new smiles this week?