I believe we are all full of stories.
I believe we are all looking for the way home. To whatever our essential, fundamental home is, where we are truly ourselves, where we are seen and recognized and known and witnessed as such.
I believe that telling our stories – to others, maybe, but most of all to ourselves – is the only way to find our way home.
Some days, the words of my stories shower over me, like a waterfall or a sudden torrential squall. These are the days when I pull over on the highway to tap sentences onto my iphone. The days I wake in the night to scribble thoughts onto the pad of paper beside my bed. The days I run with words tumbling over themselves in my head, the words of others, songs and quotations, somersaulting over and with my own images and thoughts, and as I run I repeat them over and over, hoping not to forget them.
Other days the words are thin. I fear they are gone. I might catch a glimmer of them, like the surprising sparkle of mica in concrete pavement. But there aren’t enough to hold onto, not enough words to form a rope that I can use to go hand-over-hand from here to there. They are a fragile line, the streak of a snail’s slimy passage, the evanescent foam on the edge of a wave, the fading white path of an airplane, disappearing before my eyes in a hydrangea blue sky.
The words tell the stories that show us the way home. Without the words, it follows, I feel a bit lost.
Trying to trust the rain will come again.
I am blown away by the sheer beauty of the images in your waiting-for-rain-ness:
“the streak of a snail’s slimy passage, the evanescent foam on the edge of a wave, the fading white path of an airplane, disappearing before my eyes in a hydrangea blue sky”
–this reads like a downpour to me.
Oh Lindsey! Tonight this so hit home. Thank you!!
My dear, I do believe you found the words…in all their Lindsay glory!
This is beautiful, Lindsey. And even as you write, your story is telling you…finding you…creating the home you seek.
Those of us who have the privilege of following your journey home find ourselves closer to our own, as well.
Thank you.
When I think of the endless fragments I have saved in places electronic and old-school, and how they whisper and shout and come at me and run away again… goading me into organizing them into something and tripping me and hitting me with sticks sometimes when I try… well, let’s just say I’d like to think I know where you’re coming from with this post (but then we can never really be sure, can we?).
Either way, I send good wishes for what I just know will be a most welcome web when you find your way to weave it all together. For now I appreciate the threads.
Yes. I’m looking at you sky, and your beach, and your concrete. Where you might see that which is fading with breeze, or flowing back into an ocean or just too much stone…
I see the sparkle.
Thank you.
Lindsey,
This is beautiful, as always.
I’m reminded of the phrase, “All who wander are not lost.” I feel, sometimes, even when there are no words, no path, somewhere inside we know we’re already home.
Blessings to you, Julie
How beautifully you can capture even writer’s block — the sign of a real writer. They’ll come again — this summer has perhaps other things in store for you to, namely (maybe) resting and recharging. (?)
They’ll come back when they need to. I, too, firmly believe that we’re all storytelling beings by nature. When all else fails, we respond to stories best. It’s how we learn about the world and ourselves. I know you’ll keep spinning yours.
Oh! There have been so many times that I have thought, this is it, the words are gone and they are never coming back and I should probably delete my blog. But I never do. And they always do. What a beautiful blog you have here mama.
I am new to your blog but feeling lucky indeed to find you on the shutter sisters “I am enough” project. This has been a life changing opportunity for both the writer as well as the reader. I find your writing so comforting
and am so glad to have you as a brave fellow traveler on our way home.
ps: I am the proud mother of the lovely and incredibly creative founder Tracey Clark!