Some days, the Universe gets it right. 
Some days, not one but two domestic violence victims experiencing homelessness get housed.
Some days, a sympathetic landlord, who was once a DV victim, looks into their eyes and hearts, before dismissing them out of hand based on their credit or rental history. 
Some days in general and this day in particular, my job is the most rewarding, most fulfilling work on the planet. 
Some days, two very deserving people get a new lease on life. Literally. 

Hers was a unique brand of malcontent. She could find the flaws (micro and macro) in anyone, anything, anytime. She was hard to be around for an evening, much less a lifetime. But they were related by blood, so the family was boxed in. She took full advantage of that, cataloguing their shortcomings ... coming and going. No effrontery was beneath her when she didn't get her way. 

His was a zest, a joie de vivre, that lit up all rooms -- that made Cincinnati feel like Le Marais. He was not just interesting but interested. No navel gazing whatsoever.  Just questions, trenchant insights and helpful overtures. A rare, Dale Carnegie millennial. 

That they were siblings, wending their way in and out of each other's young adult lives, led the neighbors to believe they had different fathers.

No one knew the neighbors were right -- until HE burst his way into their lives, irreversibly and comprehensively upending the apple cart.


/////

I'm procrastinating by way of fun with fiction.

I'm avoiding the passion project (the raw materials are in the car a few blocks away from the cafe on Chestnut where we are writing, reading, refueling this afternoon -- I always have an excuse), while also trying not to write about the stuff of my dreams. Like finding a homeless baby on the beach and being unable to find shelter for him. Like being in a shelter and having my only blanket stolen. Like falling down an elevator shaft. My therapist -- have I mentioned he's Jewish AND gay AND a thespian? Triple threat! -- tells me the dreams are an essential means of processing my secondary, on-the-job trauma. I suppose he's right, but the cumulative effect is taking its toll. I can't get away ... away. My husband understands this and my imperative, which is why he drove me over the bridge for Project Immersion Elsewhere. For the critical quarterly cultural fix. We've had an idyllic 24 hours. Friend's art opening in North Beach, connection with old (and older) friends, lovely late night meal, luxurious, unhurried morning, hot (NOT Bikram) yoga by candlelight, vegan lunch -- hello, Wildseed SF!, Union St. meandering, French cafe with dueling New Yorkers (Xmas gift "for my husband") and soon ... NFL on Fillmore and (God willing) a Tom Brady* loss. I love where we live but I miss me some city.

My daughter recently decided to attend college in THE city: NYC. The land grant university, smack dab in the middle of the midwest, didn't suit her. She's exhaling as she leans into what is not so much a course correction as it is a new direction. Come fall of 2020, there will be more city indeed. And possibilities heretofore unknown to her -- in what will undoubtedly be her version of away ... away, writ large. 



* He's a Trump guy, ergo, dead to me.

May you go wherever you need to go -- in 2020 and beyond -- to find it, tap it, feel it, live it, share it. 

Photo from last run of the decade, 
Helen Putnam Regional Park.





















​A Blessing for Beauty
May the beauty of your life become more visible to you, that you may glimpse your wild divinity.
May the wonders of the earth call you forth from all your small, secret prisons and set your feet free in the pastures of possibilities.
May the light of dawn anoint your eyes that you may behold what a miracle a day is.
May the liturgy of twilight shelter all your fears and darkness within the circle of ease. 
May the angel of memory surprise you in bleak times with new gifts from the harvest of your vanished days.
May you allow no dark hand to quench the candle of hope in your heart.
May you discover a new generosity towards yourself, and encourage yourself to engage your life as a great adventure.
May the outside voices of fear and despair find no echo in you.
May you always trust the urgency and wisdom of your own spirit.
May the shelter and nourishment of all the good you have done, the love you have shown, the suffering you have carried, awaken around you to bless your life a thousand times.
And when love finds the path to your door may you open like the earth to the dawn, and trust your every hidden color towards its nourishment of light.
May you find enough stillness and silence to savor the kiss of God on your soul and delight in the eternity that shaped you, that holds you and calls you.
And may you know that despite confusion, anxiety and emptiness, your name is written in Heaven.
And may you come to see your life as a quiet sacrament of service, which awakens around you a rhythm where doubt gives way to the grace of wonder, where what is awkward and strained can find elegance, and where crippled hope can find wings, and torment enter at last unto the grace of serenity.
May Divine Beauty bless you.


John O’Donohue, from Beauty – The Invisible Embrace