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Cheap Thrills: Splurge.

Oh hello, blog world. I'm sorry I've been neglecting you sorely over the last month or so... I've been up to my ears in wedding madness. I'll try to jump back on the bandwagon here, and maybe even use my Fridays to show you bits and pieces of wedding planning love. But for today, as it is Tuesday, we're cheap-thrilling it up.

I confess that this cheap thrill breaks the rules. It sort of annihilates the rules, really, at over three times my promised budget of $5 (hey, I'm planning a wedding... going over budget is what I'm supposed to do, right? ;) ). But it's one of my absolute favorite fall things, and I have to pitch it to you. Ladies and gents, meet my daily guilty fall pleasure:



Cinnamon Buns by Philosophy. Oh how I <3 this body wash/shampoo/bubble bath. It's like bathing in a bakery. It smells so darn edible that they suggest it not be used by children since they are likely to wind up eating. I'd caution adults: you too may wind up trying to eat this stuff. I can assure you with confidence that it tastes like soap. Don't bother.

Anyway, once a year in early October, I treat myself to a bottle of this yummy scented stuff. It's one of my very favorite fall rituals, and if you are feeling a bit splurgy, I highly recommend it. I usually make the bottle last through February, so really, that's a lot of bang for your 16 bucks. Bonus points if you use the recipe on the bottle to actually make cinnamon buns.

You can get some at Sephora, or online through Amazon or Drugstore.com. Or, if you're Rachelle, Shannon, or Kevin, you can find some in our shower. Have at it. :)

love.

Wanna hear it? Here it goes.

This story begins with an ending.

In the end of 2004, I was a broken girl with a stubborn heart and a bruised sense of hope. Around that time, I picked up a little book called Blue Like Jazz and found comfort in stories about Portland, a faraway sort of place for me at the time, and an honest look at spirituality, which wasn't yet en vogue and certainly outside of how I'd been relating to God thus far. I read every Don Miller book I could find for the next few years and filed their contents away in my mind.

Two years later I found myself in Oregon, in a little house in my parents' brand new big backyard, and began the slow and painful process of learning how to be alone, how to mourn the life I'd anticipated and face the life I had, how to be content with the woods and a family who loves me and a God who knows my name. I made friends who hadn't known me as I had been, reworked my relationships, watched and protested as God rewrote my story.

Two years later I found myself in Portland, lonely for a church family, standing in front of a book case with a copy of Blue Like Jazz in my hands, scanning the pages frantically for the name of that church, you know, the one Don Miller talks about, the one with the football player pastor and the new idea of religion. In only hours I found myself seated alone in a high school auditorium, unaware of the significant moment of my body in that chair, my heart in that building, my first day in a new home that I couldn't yet recognize.

Nearly two years later I found myself at a party, a celebration of the birth of the incomparable Annie Skroski, one of the many amazing people who have become my Imago/Portland family. I'd been to dozens of parties like this one over the last year and a half, full of laughter and costumes and belonging and love. Parties with dancing, and friends, and food, and photo booths.

Favorite and I met that night, in a photo booth. I could tell you how it went down, but I'll show you instead. Here we are meeting for the very first time:




Since that beautifully orchestrated night, photo booths have been a strange sort of motif in our relationship. For example, here we are on the day we officially became an item:



We've been photographed together at weddings, parties, and in numerous arcades and bars and aquariums, squished together in old school booths that take our $5 and hand us a memory.

More importantly, I've been loved gracefully, wholly, and unrelentingly by the most amazing, generous, and intelligent man. He has never allowed me to hide, never let me feel less than beautiful, and invited me into every corner of his life, his space, his time. He has given me an extraordinary gift - the privilege to love and be loved in a way that acknowledges God, respects the journey, and inspires me to be a better follower, to love more, to give more, to open up.

Last Friday I uncovered my eyes and found myself in a photo booth that Favorite had set up in his house. And, after a bit of goofy photo taking, Favorite found himself down on one knee.

Oh, you'd like to see? Well, go figure, I have pictures:





This story ends with a beginning. Five months from now, I will stand in front of friends and family with the man I've chosen who so wonderfully has also chosen me, and we will be married by our cherished friend Tony, who was once only a beat poet in a book that brought me to my new family, and is now someone I call friend and share a table with every Sunday night. If God is in the details, and you know I believe He is, He is most certainly in that one.

What I would say to you is this: This story you're in, I'm in, we're in, is a symphony. It's so much bigger than all of us, the plan is so much greater than we can fathom, and the pieces come together in ways we can't begin to imagine. The miracle will come, grace is yours to accept, God wants to bless you. Watch for the tiny patterns, the echoes of amazing love. You'll find them. You'll feel them. God takes broken edges and marries them like puzzle pieces. Hold on. Stay in. Wait for the miracle. And when it comes, and it will come, try to take a few pictures.

love.

In Other Words...

Favorite's words: "Will you marry me?"
Mine: "Yes!"

God is good all the time. :)

!!!!!!!!!!

(details to follow... stay tuned)

love.

Fall Cometh. (!)

Next week it will officially be autumn.

The days here are still oddly sticky, warming in the late afternoon in that Oregon way that I'm not sure I'll ever get used to, but the mornings are arriving with the tiniest suggestion of a chill, a whisper that yes, fall is coming. I am beside myself with anticipation.

One of the many perils of the hopelessly romantic is our ability to become madly, passionately enamored of things like flowers and oceans and entire seasons. But seriously, is anything better than fall? I'd have never guessed I could love a time of year as fiercely as I love fall in the Pacific Northwest. There is a part of my soul that lives only in smoke spirals snaking out of chimneys and the bitter softness of wool on the skin of my neck, and it stumbles out of hibernation in the early days of September, squinting in the light and quivering with the sheer fantasticness of it all - months of uninterrupted loveliness, color, joy.

I grew up in a place where it was perpetually spring - consistently somewhere between warmish and too warm with a smattering of rain and a month or two of summer heat tossed in for good measure. I loved autumn then, but not with the distracting fervor with which I crave it here. Because here, here there are leaves and fabulously unexpected shivery breezes. Here, hats and scarves and gloves begin to sheath the hurrying bodies on sidewalks, gift wrapping the city in handknits and coziness and fuzz. Here the seasonal totems are abundant and unmissable - pumpkins growing in yards, turkeys running wild through my family's pastures, Christmas trees lined up on the sides of the highway. Here people will begin to stand closer together, will let the light of the coming holidays begin to ignite them, will huddle for warmth and snuggle for the simple perfection that is being tangled up with loved ones as the world cools around them.

Autumn is coming, and I'm wishing you mugs filled with warm things, hands to hold, and cozy sweaters. I'm wishing you the smell of chimney smoke and harvest and rain and the time to recognize it. I'm wishing you sharpened pencils and apple cider and holiday kitsch. I'm wishing you the faith of children and the ability to see this season through their eyes. I'm wishing something deep within you to begin the celebration of gratitude, the spirit of giving, the desire for peace on earth. I'm wishing you people to love, and those who will love you. I'm wishing you autumn and magic and joy.

love.

Cheap Thrills: Be in the right place at the wrong time.

To be fair, this week's Cheap Thrill is not a new idea. I've heard it suggested in many different forums, read about it in a few books, and watched it play out in a movie or two. That said, it is sort of a fun challenge, and I'm daring you to do it sometime this week. That's right. I dare you. Double dog.

Here are your steps:

1. Choose a buddy. I especially like the idea of doing this with someone you see regularly in a way that could be perceived as "routine." This person could be your significant other, a coworker, a close friend, or a sibling or parent or child... someone with whom you spend some time doing the sameoldsameold thing. It also helps if your buddy of choice is, well, down with crazy. Because they're going to need a bit of a can-do attitude for this one.

2. Choose an activity that has an appropriate time and place, like eating breakfast or dinner, or rollerskating, or sleeping, or sitting on a couch, or watching a movie. You'll be wise to choose an activity that doesn't require help from professionals - for example, getting pedicures won't work out so well here. Unless you DIY it up.

3. Choose a completely incongruous time and/or place to perform your activity of choice. This is where it gets fun. Get together and make pancakes at 2am. Go rollerskating in the snootiest neighborhood in town. Stage a sleepover on your front porch. Load a loveseat into a truck and take it up a hill to sit and watch the sunset. Form a knitting circle in a popular bar on a Friday night. Grab your laptop and a DVD and have a movie afternoon at the beach. Go for a walk in the pouring rain. Agree to meet for coffee at 4am, bring a french press and a blanket, and chat until the sun comes up. Get all dressed up and go eat at McDonald's. Do something in a way that you've never done it before.

4. Enjoy seeing your chosen buddy in a new context. Laugh about that time you met for hamburgers on the roof at midnight for years and years to come. Learn something about each other, form a bond, mend a distance, create a moment.

5. Tell me what you do! I'm dying to know if you'll try it.

love.

In Other Words...

Favorite thinks I'm dating him for his car and his ability to apply a quote from UHF to nearly any situation. I'm actually dating him for his ability to recite the following piece of loveliness... among other reasons too copious to list here.

If You Knew
by Ellen Bass

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm
brush your fingertips
along the lifeline's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt,
They'd just had lunch, and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

Ellen Bass has a book out, The Human Line. I vote we go get it. Who's with me?

My prayer for you, for us, this week is that we remember to touch each other, remember to notice, remember to see.

love.

If I live to be a hundred...

I'm fairly certain that the following is common knowledge, but just in case you haven't checked your email in the last several years or have just returned to blog reading after a stint on a reality television show or an island somewhere, I'll make sure it's perfectly clear: I am the biggest cheeseball on the face of the planet.

I've tried at different phases of my life to act somehow less ridiculously cheesy than I natural am, but despite valiant efforts at the ages of 14 and 22, the cheese eventually finds its way to the surface. I am a total cheese fest. I like horrible movies. I am routinely moved to tears by YouTube videos starring animals and small children (Christian the Lion?!? Please. I'm welling up just typing about it). I can find the bright side of a nuclear war and I genuinely believe with every sparkly fiber of my cheesy being that Disneyland is the happiest place on earth. I can't help but clap my hands when asked if I believe in fairies. I'm practically carved out of cheddar.

Which means, sometimes, when I'm feeling a little off or a little headache-y or a little blue, it requires the cheesiest of something to cheer me up. Today, it was country singer Jessica Andrews. Jessica had, like, one hit song ever, and on the cheesy meter, it's a total chart topper. But the best thing about this song is that I can change the lyrics so that they directly apply to MY life! Oh joy of cheesy cheesy joys!

So this afternoon found me in my car, in the rain, driving down the highway and singing at the top of my lungs:

I am GENEVIEVE's grandaughter
the spittin' image of my MOTHER
and when the day is done
my DADDY's still my biggest fan...

... like the complete fool that I am. I got all choked up and everything. It was pathetic and beautiful.

All of which to say...

Thank God we were given spirits that delight in ridiculous things. Thank God that we all have our silly, tiny moments of cheesy joy. Thank God that we can laugh at our lame little selves and have a good cry when we need one over nothing more than a deer smelling a cat on a computer screen. And thanks, God, for delighting in ridiculous us.

love.

Cheap Thrills: Local Addition Edition

Okay, so when I started this whole Cheap Thrills bit, the goal was to keep things very non-Portland specific to allow for equal opportunity participation. However, tonight I'm making an exception to the rule for the purpose of plugging one perfectly perfect new Portland haunt.

People, you must go visit my favorite new spot, Palace of Industry. Close your eyes for a minute and imagine that Anthropologie suddenly became less corporate and spendy and is now all genuinely second-hand or handmade, and then imagine that they started selling delicious food and obtained a liquor license and became somehow just, well, cooler, and there -hold that thought! You have behind your eyelids the fantasticness that is Palace of Industry.

I keep hearing that the stretch of N Killingsworth near our house is going to be reborn, revitalized, and turn into one of the hip little Portland neighborhoods it looks up to and admires. Palace of Industry makes me believe. And with The Naked Sheep, a fairly decent yarn store, mere feet away from the door, it's entirely possible that I might start spending ridiculous amounts of time there.

Palace of Industry wins the cheap thrill award today because I bought a very cute dress there for $5. They have a ton of super well-edited, spot on vintage clothes, and if you have a sewing machine, you can score something with a split seam or tiny hole for next to nothing and fix it up. I had my new dress in wearable shape within 10 minutes of bringing it in the house. There were plenty of $5 or less (fewer? The money thing always gets me...) items left on the shelves, so get to it already.

Palace's FB page is here. If you want to just take my advice and go there, set your GPS to 5426 N Gay Ave. Portland, OR 97217.

love.

In Other Words

Today's In Other Words is brought to you by Billy Collins and my favorite three-year-old of the week. I highly recommend experiencing the following poem by going here and watching it recited by this super cool kid who will probably have a hard time getting a date in high school and marry a supermodel shortly thereafter.

Seriously, click here.

Or you can be all traditional and just read it. It goes like this:

Litany
by Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.


However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way you are the pine-scented air.


It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.


And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.


It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.


I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley,
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.


I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.


By the way, it's cloudy and a little chilly and delightfully fall-like outside. I'm wishing you somebody wonderful to cozy up with. ;)

love.

Last Thursday

8/26/10

tonight we will stand in the presence of wonder
swirled tightly into a sea of the masked and the painted
they will carve roads around us
brush us with their feathers
singe us with the tips of fire soaked swords

tonight strangers will dance with the ghosts of old friends
and the corners will smell of sweat and lost causes
dogs will lie down on the sidewalks
truths will be learned
lies will be carried

tonight we will bear witness to a thousand magical onces
we will feel the heat of the many and watch as they twirl
you and i will wander past fallen kings
and emerging artists
someone's first kiss, someone's child
the poet and his guitar
a drunk and a lover
the vain and the bleeding
the last and the first


the miracle being only
that among them
i will hold your hand

love.

Portlandiversary.

Dear Portland-

I know you are only a city. I know that you are only the sum of the living, breathing bodies that inhabit you - the things they build, the places they live, the doings they do. I know that, though we often speak of you as though you are one of us, you have no real pulse, no heartbeat, no soul, no energy of your own. I know you don't really have a "heart." But you have mine.

My dear friend Annie and I were talking yesterday about how today is her 5 year anniversary with you, which started me thinking that it's also our 2 year celebration, you and me. I remember how vast you seemed when I first met you, how I stubbornly tried to learn a city built on a grid in tiny rings of concentric circles, how you patiently let me get lost and found a thousand times, how your people smiled me right on through. I noticed today, driving familiar streets, that you have become a collection of small places for me - a memory in every neighborhood, an adventure in every restaurant, an echo on every corner. You have both shrunken and grown, lovely city, and I am poised and ready to continue to explore you and the hundreds of other somewheres hiding within your walls and under your trees that I will slowly, methodically, patiently claim as my own.

Dear Portland, thank you for becoming home to me. Thank you for letting me be myself, for wrapping me up, for taking me in. Happy Anni(Annie!)versary.

love.

Cheap Thrills: Felt It Up

Today's Cheap Thrill is a craft project! Hooray!

I love felt. I love felt because it's cheap and fairly sturdy and doesn't unravel when you cut it. My beautiful friend Katherine got married a while back, and we used felt for all kinds of projects, not the least of which was this pretty little flower in her hair:

Here are your steps:

1. Admire how cute groom Chris looks over Kat's right shoulder all smiley in the photo above. Happiness is adorable.

2. Go to the store and get some felt (should be about 30 cents a sheet... go buck wild!) in the colors you prefer, and some cheap buttons (or raid your button stash if you have that sort of thing, or use one of those spare buttons that came with a coat or something).

3. Go to this sweet little blog and acquire the template: Click Here!

4. Cut out your petals, stitch or glue them together, stick the whole shebang on a spare bobby pin, and tada! You are now a craft genius. Martha is shaking in her intimidatingly well chosen and sensible shoes. Of course, she's making a five course dinner from scratch while she's shaking, but whatever. Screw her.

5. Wear. Feel proud. Glow a little. Make more (cause felt is cheap!) and give them away.

love.

In other words...

If you haven't read Hyperbole and a Half, you may not actually be aware of how hard you can laugh. If you'd like to find out, I strongly encourage you to start with this recent post that may well be a contender for my new favorite. But they're all good. Seriously. All of them.

Go here and read this!!!

love.

Cartoon Friday

My sister sent me this sweet little video -





love.

Ah, yes, poetic Thursday

where your tears have fallen
there are riverbeds
etched winding into the previously unmarred
landscape of my forehead
visible to me only
i can see them like a fingerprint
on the topography of my reflection
feel them like a memory
on the map of my soul
i carry them like a whisper
like a melody
like time
and smile secretly over the many small ways
you have already begun to change me

so altered, i am only yours

love.

Love Letter

I turned 28 on Sunday.

28 is a lot of things: one of the precious few ages I'll ever be that end in my favorite number, a mere two years hopskipjump from a new decade, and, most significantly, the age my mother was when she gave birth to me. As of Sunday, August 15th, I've known my parents for exactly half of their lives. Which is, well, interesting. I don't really know what I feel about that.

But I do know how I felt on Sunday: loved. I am blessed and surrounded by amazing people who went above and beyond to make my day a special one. Favorite showed up at the crack of dawn to wake me and make a breakfast of all my favorite things. He came with beautiful flowers and seemingly bottomless pockets full of cards from just about everyone I know. My birthday team assembled and transcribed messages from all of my nearest and dearest and armed Favorite with them to deliver to me nearly every fifteen minutes throughout the day. 41 cards in all. Wow.

Here's what I love about God - He's the master of completing the cycle. There I was, birthday joy incarnate, reading hundreds of thoughtful, flattering, beautiful words from people I love and admire, walking completely unarmed into an Imago service that ended in an elder's public confession of an affair. One brave, well-loved, and surrounded man stood trembling before our congregation and whispered the story of his failure. And I wept, and fought to keep myself in my seat. Because I have stood in rooms of people who suddenly saw me as a different person than they had only moments before. Because I know what it feels like to fail hugely, publicly, painfully, and irrevocably. And because I know that God sees him with exactly the same eyes, the same love, with which He still sees me - the same love that has been mine to bask in from the moment of my birth and will remain mine, will remain his, through a thousand other failures and let downs and public humiliations.

I hold these 41 cards in my hands with their beautiful words and I love them, I cherish them, I count them treasure, but I know the traits attributed to me on them aren't really mine. I am all things destructive, I am stubborn and prideful, and I could never account on my own for the hurt that I've caused. These things you see in me, friends whom I love, they are only the product of the grace I've been afforded. They are redemption. They are not mine to claim, but I'm grateful any time I can be a vessel for them. I am none of these words on my own, and all of them through Christ who lives in me. What a privilege to have them laid out before me, to be able to read forgiveness on a notecard, to remember that but for the grace of God go I, to remember that in all things He wants to bless me and use me.

My amazing Portland family, you gathered at Favorite's in the afternoon and jumped out and yelled surprise, despite my best efforts to melt you. You had a beautiful cake and beautiful faces and I'm not sure I've ever been grateful for or in love with any time in my life more than this one, so obviously surrounded by love. The already amazing family I was blessed with has grown to include all of you, and I'm so very glad. You are my evidence of God's ability and desire to rebuild. Yours are the words He uses to love me. You are my very best birthday present.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I'm found
Was blind, but now I see.

love.

Cheap Thrills: Operation Beautiful

Today's Cheap Thrill is a real do-gooder, and it's brought to you by one beautiful girl named Caitlin who saw fit to start a bit of a body image revolution that I can't help but get behind.

Most of you who follow this blog know that I deal with women and their body image issues at work every day. I witness first hand the absurd tendency that we all have to zoom in on the worst parts of ourselves the moment we step in front of a mirror, and the venomous way we turn that critical gaze onto each other. It's tragic really - so many beautiful pieces of intentional creation being torn into unrecognizable ugliness, verbally berated, and scornfully poked and pinched. How very wasteful and how very sad.

Operation Beautiful is a rockstar of an idea - effective, unexpected, and cheap and easy to participate in. Here's how you roll:

1) Buy some PostIt notes. Standard PostIts can run you anywhere from $1.99 up, depending on how many you want and how fancy you want to go. Or take some off your desk at home. Or ask your boss if you can have a pack for a good cause. Take note that this blog does not advocate stealing PostIts from work. But I'm not really watching you, either. Get some sticky notes.

2) Onto said sticky notes, write encouraging phrases, like: "You are beautiful EXACTLY as you are" or "Hey hottie, you look GOOD!" or "You are worth so much more than just your reflection. Beauty starts inside of you. And girl, you've got it going on." or whatever you would like someone to say to you while you're bikini shopping.

3) Take your PostIt army and deploy it onto mirrors in public places where women, or men, might see a PostIt in an insecure moment: dressing rooms, school bathrooms, other bathrooms, department stores, etc.

4) If you want to, take a picture and send it to Caitlin at www.operationbeautiful.com. She'll write back to you, even, which is neat. Definitely visit the site for inspiration.

5) Remember that the words you've written to encourage others also apply to you. Remember that you were created to be who you are, not who you could be airbrushed into. Remember that you are a work of art. Wear yourself proudly. Go forth and be beautiful.

love.

In Other Words...

Firstly, I'd like to apologize for my silence for the last several days. Turns out I took a week off of blogging for my birthday. Not really on purpose. Sorry. Moving on...

For today's other words, I'd like to direct you to a blog belonging to my friend Joy. Joy spends her days researching the relationships of those in the 18-35 age bracket and, as a result, she has some very interesting and entertaining wisdom to offer. I love this girl's spirit. Go check her out.

Joy's Fabulous Blog

love.

In other words...

Our pastor shared this poem with us a while back. I think it's beautiful, so I'm sharing it with you.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

love.