my cup runneth over and the transitions thereafter

in the process of living, i suspended writing for the last few weeks of my trip. sometimes people forget the details so they insist on writing everyday. in my case, these details are burned into my mind so vividly that when i close my eyes, i see them. last night i was dreaming about a kayak and water flowing over my computer. i was using the computer to protect myself against the elements. then i was in the arms of a man who loved me and made me laugh. my sister woke me up with a giggle, "you were a smiling sleeper!"

i rolled over, but was unable to harness that dream again. that's very much where i am right now. like a dreamer suspended between reality and a weightless, watery dream world. i am now in limbo between my past experiences and my future goals. i am terrified and exhausted, thrilled and expectant, but i have been unable to touch this blog since i left asia. it's just too personal, too reminiscent of those days and right now i just can't process all of that joy. in the words of henry david thoreau,

"if the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal- that is your success. all nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. the greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. we easily come to doubt if they exist. we soon forget them. they are the highest reality...the true harvest of my daily life is somewhat intangible and indescribably as the tints of morning or evening. it is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which i have clutched"

i have touched the rainbow, worshiped the dawn, bathed in luminance and danced in the air. looking over endless fields of green rice, pointed hats knee deep in planting, i turned to allan and whispered, "my cup runneth over" and smiled like the light across the horizon. i agonized over the decision to return to the old life, knowing it would entail forging a new life in a new world and now i return to reality to push the pages from this old, gorgeous chapter in the book of me to the new, blank pages. possibility in my life legend is currently giving me writers block, so i stand, poised with a mammoth quill waiting for the dust to clear from my mind.

"everything had changed suddenly- the tone, the moral climate; you didn't know what to think, whom to listen to. as if all your life you had been led by the hand like a small child and suddenly you were on your own, you had to learn to walk by yourself. there was no one around, neither family nor people whose judgment you respected. at such a time you felt the need of committing yourself to something absolute- life or truth or beauty- of being ruled by it in place of the man-made rules that had been discarded. you needed to surrender to some such ultimate purpose more fully, more unreservedly than you had ever done in the old familiar, peaceful days, in the old life that was now abolished and gone for good."
-boris pasternak
from dr. zhivago