Spring

(taken from the Zenrin)

It's Spring now in Melbourne; we've sprung our clocks forward, little scattered bursts of color and light are springing forth, and on warm days the breeze carries with it the sound of children's laughter in the gardens. With all this springing! going on around me, I'm struggling to put some much needed springs in my own step. The experience of being here is strange. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a dream and I can't quite wake up to fully realize and experience what's going on around me. Those who know me well would argue, and I admittedly concur, that I'm sort of like that normally anyway, that I'm often in my own little world. Spacey Tracy. I'm sure everyone feels from time to time like they're on the outside looking in at the world. Or maybe on the inside looking out to someplace familiar but somehow out of reach. While I don't think there's anything wrong with changing one's perspective to get a different view, rather, I think that's important, I do think there is a danger in disassociating ourselves from one another and from the moment. I've been thinking, what would happen if we all just stopped to feel the fullness of everything, to make a faint memory of the island of isolation, the loneliness of self-pity, to finally experience our own life and the lives of others as whole within wholeness. Like the AH-HAH! moment you realize the keys you've been scouring the house for are in your hands, sometimes I think we exhaust ourselves in the tireless striving for something we already possess. In the months prior to coming here, I had a hard time thinking about anything besides Australia. I was consumed with thoughts of the future. And now that we are here, I am consumed with thoughts of the future, of being back in the States with friends and family whom I dearly miss and with my good friend familiarity (whom I dearly miss.) And it's just as easy to dwell in the past. There have been moments when Jason and I have looked at each other and said, "What were we thinking coming here?" We had the best little life in Takoma Park, MD, simple and sweet, with the most precious dog and cat in the entire world to love on and play with every day, the best job in the entire world, a few friends to hang out with, a car to get around in, a backyard to play in, etc, etc. I have to keep reminding myself that, not only is the present enough, but really, it's all I have. And if I'm not conscious enough to recognize the beauty inherent in my own life and in my own heart this very moment, I will always be looking for it someplace else. What I'm trying to say is, it's Spring, and it's wake-up time. Spring is my favorite season for that very reason. It's a time of growth and rebirth, the land long reposed under the winter cold, wakes up to see and make known it's beauty and worth in the form of exuberant color and light.

(Though where you are it's fall

Happy Spring to you all.)

A spooky (I'm getting in the Halloween spirit), but pertinent picture to say exactly what I mean...I like to think of it as my future ghost, coming back to tell me the meaning of it all:

(quote by Gensei)