Sometimes Someone Else Is Talking To You

I didn't know what kind of shape I was in when I landed at SFO at 8:40 this morning. The sleepless night prior was a clue, I knew that. But it wasn't until after the two trips to La Boulange, the four-mile walk to Sutro baths, a coke with lime at the Cliff House, manicure/pedicure at Lavande, hours of napping, unusual dreams and then grapefruit juice and thai shrimp potstickers that I really got it.

I just needed to catch up with myself. This is what naps are for, and dreams that wake you with a perfect understanding of what you needed to hear about the world. It turns out I've spent the last few weeks doing the right things finally - apologizing in the right way, standing my ground about the right things, the right letting go, the right holding on. Not right with a capital R, just right in my way. The way that lets me feel settled in myself and quiet for a change.

There are a lot of things I don't tell you about myself. The meanings in my dreams this afternoon swirled around all that, they were about pilgrimages, leaving the house, coming back to find a note there, saying that someone had prayed for me. "I never understood the significance of that before," I told the person in the dream, taking the hand-written card from the doorsill, holding it like a gift. Some of the days I spend in this world, I am its lover, some days, its beloved. Too few find me the beloved, but today was different. I was too tired to be anything but loved. Sometimes that's a good thing.