I have seen the future.

My friend Danny and I went to a screening of The Future to-night and were fortunate enough to be a part of a Q & A session with actress and director, Miranda July. While the movie itself was mentally stimulating and creatively built, I walked away with a bigger curiosity about the woman herself. This poised and petite and peculiar woman with a mop of curls on her head and a lot on her plate all the time--she is a creative think-tank, and I cannot wait to get my hands on her short stories and see what she comes out with in, dare I say it, "the future".

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"It was a real whale, a photograph of a real whale. I looked into its tiny wise eye and wondered where that eye was now. Was it alive and swimming, or had it died long ago, or was it dying now, right this second? When a whale dies, it falls down through the ocean slowly, over the course of a day. All the other fish see it fall, like a giant statue, like a building, but slowly, slowly." And her stories are currently helping me with my phobias.

i've been tracking my time here by the stages of the moon,

and here are some good things about the right-now:

- people; family, tia, anca.

- picking shirt-fulls of figs with my little brother. i love the luxury of grabbing two or three figs on my way up the stairs, every day. four times a day. i eye them like persephone must have eyed the pomegranate handed her by hades, but that metaphor is probably completely incorrect because this place is not hell and the figs are not good enough to keep me here forever.

- buna is so cute.

- the weather has been very kind. foggy mornings and hot-but-not-too-hot afternoons. eternal sunshine. swaying palms. bright blue sky. i'm going to vouch for a hammock at our next family dinner, such that my reading outdoors is enhanced exponentially.

- with the influx of phone calls, letters, photographs and text messages i've been receiving every day, seattle world doesn't seem so far away. this is good for my achy heart.

- this lady's music has been keeping my heart light and my creativity on the up and up. and she's from seattle, of course.

- classic movies on the lawn of the hollywood forever cemetery. ucla walks and running my hands along the richard serra sculpture. old, old california architecture. (letting la get on my good side. with tia's help.)

- the ocean. early in the morning. late at night. (though not really in between. oh, you should see the way the moonlight pours a tunnel of light onto the wide expanse of the pacific ocean!)

- netflix. seriously. expanding my range of foreign films and silent films and talkies. falling asleep to movies i've seen a hundred times is also (somehow) quite lovely.

here's to some more of the same, and letting even more in.

Wise little book.

"They are the flowers I love best," she was saying. "I call them moon-flowers, and their perfume is so strange and uncanny that many a weary soul, when smelling them, has found sweet sleep."

"May I smell them, dear Mother Moon?" asked Pansy in a voice all trembling with emotion.

"You are not a weary soul, little Pansy," answered the planet. "You are a fresh breath from the earth's blessed spring-time, so do not bury your little nose in those dream-flowers, Pansy, sweet Pansy, but move on to plants more gay, and more in keeping with your youth."

Suddenly, everything has changed.

And these are some recent frames of places and people and happenings that I am already missing.

Every day I am away it will become more real that I am not going back for a very long time. But even as my heart continues to ache, I feel I am on the brink of a power surge. What an adventure I will soon embark upon! In the meantime, I will look around this holding place and love the things I come across. Yes, I will try.

These days,

Zeek and Rachel are married! We all made our way down to Keizer, Oregon last weekend to witness one of the most beautiful weddings I'm sure has ever happened. The Earl family (and their flock of sheep) graciously opened up their big red barn and backyard for all 175 of us; there was dancing with paper plates and eating too-delicious Greek food and gawking at the most beautifully displayed collection of Coptic crosses. Oh my. What an honor to celebrate their wedding day with them, and what a bigger honor to call them both my friends. Mmm.

These two are next (2 weeks!). I kissed them a teary-eyed goodbye about three hours ago, as they packed up their car and left Seattle. They have a wedding day to plan and family to savor before packing up and leaving for some grand escapades. Oh, this "moving on with our lives" is proving to be as hard as I'd anticipated it to be. Nonetheless, the way we've grown and created a sense of family together is something I carry with me every day.