Hello friends,
My plan was to spend some time song-writing this afternoon, but in thinking of song subjects... I thought of a blog subject instead. At least the guitar will be there when I'm done. So, instead of writing my own songs, I will listen to the beautiful music of "The Color Purple" and write my thoughts into the endless void that is the internet...

In life, there are moments that seem as though they never happened. A minute, an hour, a day... any span of time that, upon retrospect, you wish you could have somehow stepped out of yourself simply to watch. Whatever that moment was... it was just that beautiful.

If you pay close enough attention, sometimes you actually realize in the middle of one of those beautiful moments that youre part of a something amazing. You, at that exact moment in time, know that, by some pre-calculated process directed by time and circumstance, you have been placed in the middle of something magical. You have been directed by something larger than yourself. A first kiss, a first love, a first time you realize the world actually is beautiful and perfect (if only for that one moment in time.) You know, right in the middle of it, that it will be one of the moments that matter...and you also know its not going to happen...in the same way... ever again.

So... you take a snapshot, if your heart allows you the time. And hope to always remember exactly the way sun hit the hardwood as it streamed in through the venetian blinds, or the glitter of the gold in his eyes when he smiles, or the odd, yet somehow perfect, smell of fresh cut grass and anti-persperant.

Those pictures, with all their detail, are yours to keep and we learn to revisit them on rainy days. Or when the golds just look like brown. Or when anger somehow clouds your sense of smell.

Perhaps it's just because I fancy myself creative, or because I have a slight flair for the dramatic when dealing with loves lost and not yet found... but what I find most ironic about these "snapshots" is how easily they can provide a feeling comfort as well as a measure of regret... lost opportunities, broken hearts and irretrievable time.

Years ago, I fell in love for the first time. Now, I use those words lightly because although it was all I knew of love at the time... I have loved stronger since, and I stand to believe that there will be a love far stronger and more real than even this love I speak of now. Anyway... Many years ago, I fell in love for the first time. My heart would freeze when our hands would touch and I can't even explain to you what happened when it was not our hands, but our lips, that were intertwined. I recognized in the very moment when I first inhaled his kiss, that was a moment that mattered. I remember stopping to take a picture, knowing all too well that it would not, and could not, ever happen exactly that way again. It was overwhelming and tender and amazing and sad. I was seventeen, but it was all those things.

If I had to explain, even to myself, how I felt at that moment back in 1999, it would take a thousand words... or perhaps only a few. His name. The color of his hoodie. Aerosmith.

It's true these moments come few and far between. Life isn't chocked full of the moments that pause your soul. The vivid memories that cause your breath to vanish, or your heart to beat a different rhythm don't happen often. And that's as it should be. I think that the beauty of moments like those lie in their rarity. Only on occasion do we stand in awe of being in the right place, at the right time, taking part in something spectacular.

Only on occasion do we stand in awe of someone larger than ourselves.

Blessings,
Tempa

thoughts...

It is Sunday. The weekend has passed all to quickly and tonight's twilight is slowly fading into just another Monday. A month has gone by since I wrote to you last. I wish I had a better excuse than "I've been busy"... but I've been busy. I am slowly realizing that life moves far to fast to be slowly realizing. Tonight, I sit with the lights already turned off. The bright white of the screen is casting a reflective glow onto the open window behind me and a cool summer breeze has found it's way into my room. In this short but needed moment of rest, I reflect upon the road in which my life has taken.

Twenty-four years and some odd days ago, I was born. A seven pound-seven ounce baby girl without a name. A head of peachfuzz attatched to a tiny body with which I knew not what to do. Helpless, cold, and completely at the mercy of others. As the years slowly (yet all too quickly) passed by, I learned things. At first the things I learned seemed simple. How to crawl, how to speak, how to use a fork without damaging the soft palate of my over-used mouth. The simple things soon turned monumental. How to read, tie my shoe, ride a bike. The momumental things I once accomplished turned to memorie, as obstacles previosuly undiscovered were conquered.
Year after year, moment after moment... I grew.
Year after year, moment after moment... I continue.

I am many things. A daughter to two, a sister to one, and a friend to many. I fancy myself a musician, a writer, an appreciator of all things creative. I am vain at times, but humble at others. I am loud with a quiet spirit. Gentle with a harsh tounge. I fear the unreasonable and reason with my fear. I am many things, but above all else I am fragile and I have been broken. Pieces of me have been lost, found, and put back into place. My heart has danced and it has mourned. It has broken, only to be filled again with love more potent than the love before. I stand five foot eight inches of joy personified. I am broken... and I am healed.

I sit here tonight, as the breeze finds it's way to my naked arms and attempt to process this overwhelming feeling of peace. I'm not sure I knew I had lost this feeling before. Perhaps it was never mine to begin with. It's as if I have spend the last twenty-four years as a blindfolded bull in a shop full of crystal trying my hardest to watch out for the Waterford. This bull is out of her shop and upon looking behind her, the goblets and vases and chandeliers remain intact.

I don't know where this leaves me. To be honest, I'm not even sure the purpose of these paragraphs... but I do know that year by year.... moment by moment... I grow.
Year by year... moment by moment... I am me.