Elsewhere

The last two months have been difficult. In fact, the last six months, the last year, the last ten have been especially difficult. Like so many others, I’m struggling with the way things are on top of the stuff that’s mine alone. Scott Peck starts his iconic book The Road Less Traveled with the sentence “Life is difficult.” So right. The challenge (and I would go so far as to say the purpose of this life for me) is to find a way to live that makes it worth sticking around, maybe even making this life pretty great.

Most of the time, opening the door and walking outside works for me. I see things, hear things, touch things that remind me of what’s beautiful and what’s bigger than me in this life. It shifts my focus and quiets my busy mind. I often think too much. But I like to think too much. It’s important to me. What I don’t like is to think so much that I dig myself into a deep, dark hole.

My friend Abby says make something when she knows I’m in one of those holes. It’s good advice. Once I’ve picked up a pair of scissors or taken the lid off a glue stick, grabbed my camera, or plunked myself down at the piano, my heart and mind are pulled away. It’s hard to get started, but once I do, I move into a place that’s elsewhere, which is exactly where I need to be.

---

An Amaryllis about to bloom. Moments like these take me away.

My friend Bill recently asked if I would make the two collages on the right after seeing the one on the left. Creating them took me elsewhere. Interestingly, they take Bill back to his childhood in Japan, another kind of elsewhere.

Today is the the 24th anniversary of my son Forrest’s death. Music is yet another form of elsewhere. I love hearing this song again just now because it reminds me of the day he and his preschool pals went to “school” with only their diapers on. There was a lot of dancing and laughing and a whole lot of love and that love makes his absence not only bearable but something more like gratitude. We were lucky to have him if only for a little while. But it doesn’t take away missing him.