A Week Later...

i'm not sure anyone is reading this anymore, but for the record...

here i am, back at home in vancouver, where it is grey and raining. i've been home for a week now, and it feels like a lifetime ago that i was in italy and france.

wondering now if it were all a dream.

how so much and so little can change in a week, three weeks, a day. the slow passage of a rainy hour, the blink of a week. the time capsules that i've stashed away in the wetworks of my brain. the archaeology of my experiences.

my breath. my feet walking on cobblestones older than i am. my hand resting on a wall erected at the beginning of history, built by other hands. my gaze rising to painted ceilings whose beauty deliver me from the groundings of the earth.

some have told me that this trip will have changed my life, that it was a life-changing experience. but what i've learned is that life changes every day, every hour, if i let it. or won't if i don't. my life is really not all that different now than when i left. but my perception of it has changed a great deal.

my breath. my feet walking on concrete sidewalks. my hand clutching an umbrella to keep me dry as i walk through the city.

here are the moments that make life precious. "what i hold in my hand..." creeley knew this. i had to travel across the planet to finally find a glimpse of what this meant. what this means.

"What
has happened
makes

the world.
Live
on the edge,

looking."

--Robert Creeley