We will smile at each other as our noses freeze and we curse the cold, but it is just an excuse to be closer to everyone we love.

These are the weekends that fade, but the moments are just perfect.

It was December but it was warm, and I slept in the car, but when we came around the side of the mountain, the city was spread out in front of me, and it felt like coming home. Overwhelmed, everything felt a little bit surreal. My aunt and uncle were in the same apartment building, a childhood friend turned out to be one of my roommates, and I had the best views from my apartment: the Shrine of the Bab, the city of Haifa, and the Mediterranean.

Everything seems better in hindsight, of course. I remember being incredibly lonely, but also really happy. Very few of us had internet at home, and every day things felt a little more distant everywhere else. One of the advantages of not having internet or tv for the first 10 months was the sheer amount of books that I read. I was 23 years old, in a new life.

Even 3 1/2 years after returning to the United States, I still miss it. I miss the Shrines, the year-round flowers, the history and age of Israel, exploring (wish I had done more of that!), the people, the warmth…(I may have been one of the few people that LOVE hot weather). Everything.

I miss it every day.

I’ve been dreaming lately. I’ve always dreamed, sometimes I dream the future and it comes true, sometimes I dream the present and my fears. there have been dreams about every noun. I dream through the lens of my camera. I live in a place that is no longer new to me, I miss the warm sun and thousand year old streets and year-round flowers.

writing will begin again, with honesty, with the kind of raw power that I used to carry in every word. I forgot to hold onto that part of me when I started speaking more than I was writing. I want to write my book, the book of the things I learned. It is so difficult to be honest now when everything is analyzed to death. just be.

Here is the truth. Each day is wonderful, even in silence sitting side by side. The past has never been more distant.

I started setting up my haft-sin table in preparation for Naw-Ruz (the first day of spring and the Baha’i New Year) and am dreaming of summer, picnics, flowy dresses and sunlight.

For now, the gray skies follow.

There are a few ways to count lucky stars. In the quiet way, 1 2 3 in a row, listed in order, in a way that makes you think of libraries, lace doilies, and trying too hard. Then there are the shouting, the in-your-face counters, in a desperate plea for attention, with too much cologne or comments on walls (graffiti or otherwise). The entire spectrum isn’t important, just stay away from the extremes.

As usual, moderation is key but there are elements of the extremes that can be included without being that person. We all know those people. No need to discuss it further.  Moving on:

Telling stories. I have never been a storyteller. How I have kept this going for nearly 10 years is completely baffling. But storytellers are the best counters, the best givers of the gift of understanding luck/mercy/fate while acknowledging the hard work involved. I know some great storytellers, and most of them have lived enough life that their stories are actually worth the time it takes to listen and understand.

My stories are little pieces, dancing for the chance to get out but to tell them in the way they need to be told is so difficult. Counting lucky stars is even harder. You have to know your audience, and here I write to blank faces. I write to the people that still read this, the people that haunt, the former friends and new ones, the stranger that found this little corner of my claimed piece of the cloud…there are no eyes to look into. Sometimes it traps me, and my stories drown under the weight.

I saw a child tonight whose perfection made my heart stop. I literally became dizzy. My dear friend reached into the incubation unit to comfort her son, this innocent soul and I loved him immediately and without reservation or thought. This is a story.

Spending quiet moments with you, the perfect times when I look up to match eyes and the wrinkles we all get when we smile at each other. This is an ongoing story.

I’ll sing my children to sleep some day with the stories of my family, my Faith, my love. I’ll sing them to sleep with the stories of the world, the stories of things that are good. I’ll have to learn the songs, first, but I’ll count my lucky stars and I’ll show them how to count theirs too. We’ll be the counters that dance in green grass with bare feet, the ones who stare up at the heavens at a never-ending universe and laugh to be alive.

The UN General Assembly recently declared access to clean water and sanitation as a human right. Those of us who live in areas of the world that have access to water may find it hard to comprehend the lack of access, the disease and struggle that come from such a simple need not being met.

Facts about water you might not know (from the Blog Action Day 2010 site):

1. Unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war.
2. More people have access to a cell phone than to a toilet.
3. Every day, women and children in Africa walk a combined total of 109 million hours to get water.
4. It takes 6.3 gallons of water to produce just one hamburger.
5. The average American uses 159 gallons of water every day – more than 15 times the average person in the developing world.

I am home, over 2 years and I am taken back to a place that is burned into my soul and heart.

Wishing I could dissolve in tears with my face pressed to the carpet, the silence and the smell of roses like a warm embrace…

“O thou cherished Fruit of the heart! Give ear to the melodies of this mystic Bird warbling in the loftiest heights of heaven. The Lord hath, in truth, inspired Me to proclaim: Verily, verily, I am God, He besides Whom there is none other God. He is the Almighty, the All-Wise.

O My servants! Seek ye earnestly this highest reward, as I have indeed created for the Remembrance of God gardens which remain inscrutable to anyone save Myself, and naught therein hath been made lawful unto anyone except those whose lives have been sacrificed in His Path. Hence beseech ye God, the Most Exalted, that He may grant you this meritorious reward, and He is in truth the Most High, the Most Great.”

- the Báb

I am happy.  There is laughter in my voice, there is a smile when I speak and there are a million things to be grateful for.  Those great tragedies loom, hover, and dissipate.  We cried in horror and we were joyous at the thought of release.  We are angry, we are hurting, we are loved and loved and we love.

I thank God that I have, that my faith is this, that in these moments everything is perfect and jumbled and a beautiful mess.  I thank you.  I am humbled.

Intense summer thunderstorms

Shiny surfaces

Lunches on the picnic bench near my office.

Delicacy

Antique Stores

(I Like: #1,#2,#3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9)

Let me explain that.  In the last few months, I realized that the time I spend on the internet is split into two different categories.  The first is social networking like Facebook & Twitter, random entertainment sites, and things of that nature.  The second area is blogs, Flickr, educational sources, and the news.

It is the first area that really gets me, that makes me angry.  I do not feel good when I am spending time on sites in the first category.  Every day I feel more inclined to disengage.

Now, I’ve been bumming around the internet since I got my first AOL screen name in 1997 or so. I’m not against the internet, it is marvelous.

However, there is a subtle drag on my spirit when I read the Facebook news feed.  As a friend put it today, “I just want to live in the moment!”  I am living other people’s moments, over and over, in a stream of information that just doesn’t stop.  I don’t have my own stories anymore, and the stories that I DO have are uninteresting, banal, and incredibly lame.  I feel this insatiable need to know, but I don’t really need to know!

The second category makes me happy.  I like the creative side, I love the tools and education I come across on the internet.  There are so many positive things that have come about because of the development of the web.

A mechanism of world inter-communication will be devised, embracing the whole planet, freed from national hindrances and restrictions, and functioning with marvellous swiftness and perfect regularity.
(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha’u'llah, 1938)

The internet is a tool, a piece of human creativity and knowledge, but it is becoming life for some.  We reference the collective as if it is alive, as if we are somehow obligated to keep feeding this machine simply because it exists.

I highly recommend Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget, it is a fascinating read and a wonderful encouragement to think about the history and modern-day trends of the Internet.

“[You are Not a Gadget] delivers a powerful reminder of the limits of the Web’s capacity to meet our needs-and its power to shape us to its will . . .” -Matthew Battles, The Barnes & Noble Review

I still have not figured out where my frustration is taking me.  I have friends who limit or delete their Facebook profiles, who refuse to even get an account.  I am stuck, in a way.  I use FB to inform, advertise, keep in touch with friends, and keep track of events.  Twitter has enabled me to communicate with friends that I wouldn’t normally have time to contact.  I am so entangled that deleting profiles is almost unthinkable.  Now I must take steps each day to reduce consumption, to slowly wean myself off the flow, and to live my life away from a computer as much as possible.

Stories are not created by sitting by myself in front of screen.  Real thought and contemplation does not happen in status updates and fleeting moments.

I am utterly overwhelmed and consumed by information.

Quite frankly, I’m exhausted.

O friend, the heart is the dwelling of eternal mysteries, make it not the home of fleeting fancies; waste not the treasure of thy precious life in employment with this swiftly passing world. Thou comest from the world of holiness – bind not thine heart to the earth; thou art a dweller in the court of nearness – choose not the homeland of the dust.
(Baha’u'llah, The Seven Valleys, p. 34)