when we didn't have a watch

it started as a cool thing to do. "yeah man, let's sleep outside for a week." 

but it's become something more. maybe it's an escape. 

but God knew we needed to slow down. 

so it's become a place where we fall asleep 

with starlight on our faces, 

and wake up to the sunrise. 

wake up as the earth rolls over

and lights orange and red trees with soft rays.

then we sit on the view and be

still. 

and my friend at the green house said that you come back with your packs and get your mountain man breakfast and look around at all the kids stumbling in and you feel so alive and think, "take that, bitches, i just slept under the stars last night." and there's no better thing in the world. 

made me laugh. 

sometimes i lay awake and in those soft moments before sleep, there's something of clarity. and i see where i'm at and where i'm going, if only for a second. that happened a couple nights ago, and i saw my life and realized it was november; realized that yesterday was august 20, and that yesterday seems like it could have even been september 28, 2007, with a father holding the guitar that british airways wouldn't let me bring and a mother's tears mixed with one last sweet embrace. and the last year flashed before my eyes like the pages of my journal when i sit and flip through, too scared to slow and read them, but magnetically pulled in nonetheless. and then the memories come and speed up to something like light speed and my stomach gets knotted and scared and i start breathing faster and faster and it doesn't stop and then... my head drops and my throat closes and i'm exhausted. and sometimes it seems as if i don't want to remember. but i do. 

sometimes it really feels as if life is happening to me. 

though i've had times of peace and rest and even stillness in that year of my life, overall it just seems like a wintry day, where the sun comes up and goes down and you didn't even take time to stop and notice. a wild ride. an out of control car on a dark road. and i don't want life to happen to me. i've been thinking the speed of my life of late has a lot to do with all the other things that are stealing my joy, like a beginning of a crack or the stream that first breaks through the rocks. 

i woke up this morning in my sleeping bag and rolled over to see the soft morning light dancing through blowing leaves on the faces of loved friends, and i had this deja vu. in the cumberland forest on the edge of the plateau. 

and i missed the days when we had no watch. when there wasn't a phone with the time and messages from far away. when all there was was the life and the death and sun and the stars and the sky and you. right there. in my lens. standing there in front of me. 

and it was simple and real. and i could find the stillness. and i knew myself. and i didn't wake up and have to get away just to be me again. 

so again, here i am and i struggle with the balance of who i was, who i became, who i came back to, and who i am, deep inside. but i know it's in the journey and in the journey we're getting closer to something and farther away from something else. it's beautiful. and it's real. and we're learning. and moving. God, life is beautiful. 

tunapenda maisha. 

strangers in a foreign land. on our way home. 

calm and swirling. 

peace.