The Cover's Closing

I finished my diary yesterday.

And have now entered a period of mourning.

It is the journal of my becoming. Its pages are not laced just with gold but with traces, traces of the friend I lost, the first love I let go, the brimming of an adventurous spirit and the agony and growth that accompanied my first return home. It is, without a doubt, my most prized possession. And if, by some unfortunate turn of fate, I die before old age has taken its toll, you will still have the most intimate pieces of my spirit left, scribbled on its pages that have seen me at my most raw. They rest between its brown covers.

When I write I move beyond the rhythm of my breath, beyond conscious awareness to a space where the world becomes clear and I in it. I re-read entries and cannot recall how the words spilled forwards. Sometimes I am struck by their beauty, as if their birth had not been by my own hand.

And in honor of this journal’s finale, of its ending—which seems more like the closing of a chapter in my life more than any death or relationship’s end or birthday’s mark or calendar’s change—in honor of the people whose names and presence and memory grace its pages, only the honest, intimate words of my past self seemed fitting.

April 5, 2009. Los Angeles.

“I don’t need answers. All the best things in my life have been surprises, completely unexpected liked tucked away gifts that, when revealed, remind you that life is often a joy to behold. I don’t need to know what comes after what happens next. I’m just asking for help making the next step, another promise that that step is the right one, the hard one, the challenging one, the one that will allow me to find all these things my heart so desperately years for.

It strikes me that maybe God is reminding me of patience—hold fast to that beating heart but don’t chase it. Follow it. Follow its beating sound and the rhythm of its calling, over the foothills as I call you home.”

August 12^th/13^th, 2009. Plane from Seoul to Delhi

“It struck me in the Seoul airport that I am going to be completely and utterly foreign. I’m white on a plane of Indians. I don’t speak a lick of Punjabi. I’m tall. I’m a woman. Oh G-D what have I done?

But life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. And something that I cannot name calls me beyond the confines of North American borders. And I’m trying desperately to be at peace with that. Be at peace that some things may be no more, be at peace with the fact that we cannot always have what we want---that we are not meant to, be at peace that this is the bravest and best thing I have ever done, be at peace that life passes one day at a time, that this is the time to be young, to be free, to explore the crevices of the world and my own spirit. Have faith in love, in friendship, in the transforming power of time. Life is short, so make it full until it is brimming with passion, overflowing with beautiful encounters with life and love and God.”