Dancing Giraffes

Beginning sometime in the 1990s and up until 2006, I wrote goals on a monthly and weekly basis.
Maybe it's time to start again; maybe.

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February, 25, 2014

"What can I get for you today?" The barista's friendly smile shines; her genuine desire to serve comes through clearly in her voice and demeanor. I always feel welcome here.

"Well I first want to transfer this Gift Card to my Gold Card," I reply.

"We can do that,"she energetically responds.

I hand her both cards, and she transfers the invisible money from the $50 Gift Card to my Starbucks Reward Gold Card. I received the free $50 Gift Card in the mail this week from Discover. Every couple months I redeem my Discover Credit Card "cash back rewards" turning my $45 reward into $50. I like this free money that credit cards started paying to their members some years back.

I order an Americana Coffee with steamed soy and a Spinach Savory Square.

Once they are ready, I carry my coffee and pastry to the round table outside where I had lain my leather book satchel. Though there is a chill in the air, I want to enjoy the last bit of sunshine for the day.

Most folks would probably call my leather book satchel a shoulder purse. But I'm not a purse person; I carry a hip pack instead of a purse.

My leather satchel was a gift from Hubby. He bought it for me on one of his trips to Nicaragua. He always buys something from the Nicaraguan artisans when he visits there. This fine leather piece was introduced to him by one of his Nicaraguan friends.

I look through my satchel.

• One 8-1/2-by-11-inch, 250-page, peacock-feather-colored, hard-bound sketch book
• One tin of 24 Faber-Castel colored pencils
• One plastic zip-lock baggie with different colored pens
• A second plastic zip-lock baggie with pencils, a pencil sharpener, small scissors, a tiny stapler, a staple remover, paper clips
• A third plastic zip-lock baggie with empathy-emotion regulation cards; and a rainbow-colored, life-balance, mindful-meditation yantra wheel 
• One mindfulness-meditation manual
• Two 10-by-7-1/2 inch tan-colored, soft-bound Moleskin journals
• One 10-by-7-1/2 inch purple-colored, soft-bound journal
• One 8-1/2-by-11-inch, tattered, green project folder

I retrieve a pen from the zip-lock pen-baggie. I pull out the purple journal and turn to the next blank page. I peruse the last entry.

"September 23, 2013." Over five months ago. I remember writing this while sitting at a cement picnic table in the woods at Rocky Knob in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I write today's date and time and place: "February, 25, 2014. Starbucks on Robinhood. 5:15ish PM."

I scribble my meandering thoughts. It dawns upon me that since my last visit to this particular journal, I'm not living in the pain I had been. Though I'm still fatigued, I don't have the extreme fatigue I suffered before. But I am less fit now than I was in September.

From my satchel I pull out the 8-1/2-by-11-inch tattered, green project folder. On the front cover is a white stick-on label with the word "Goals" written from my pen on the label. I open the folder.

On the inside flap of each cover is a pocket. In each of the pockets, written by my pen on loose leaf paper, are goals and life mission statements dating back as far as 1996.

In the middle of the folder, three brad clasps combine loose leaf notebook paper on which, over a decade ago, I'd begun an index for my my then-journals. One of my many unfinished and probably never-to-be-finished projects.

I see-saw back and forth perusing my past goals and then scratching out my current thoughts in my purple journal.
I pause and ponder and sip my coffee and finish eating my pastry.
I notice a lone black bird soaring high in the crystal blue sky.
Beyond the bird, much higher and more distant, a white contrail leaves its wake in the blue.

Such a contrast, the bird and the jet.
Birds nor jets write goals; they just soar.

I turn my attention back to my past scribblings...

"September, 2003.
...I am a tall, graceful giraffe.
From my perspective the view is fine.
I can see to the left, to the right, behind, and ahead.
I love to move, especially run.
I love to stretch.
I stretch to the tallest limbs for my nourishment.
I am aware and observant.
I am open and free....

...Every day is a day to dance.
Every day is a day to commune.
Every day is a day to listen...to what is said and to what is not said.
Every day is a day to itself and I determine to dance for that day.
As I teach my children to love themselves, I teach me to love myself...."