Rare Earth

I am so full of strange appreciation for what my life has become since coming to Randolph. This little town has been great balm to me. I have had a lot of help, and most of it seems to come from some sort of just-out-of-consciousness place. I came here trying to recover from a failed relationship that had managed to strand me high on the rocks for a very long time. I had to leave to salvage what was left of me. But it wasn't as if the bonds were broken. They were merely stretched a longer way. And I survived and rejected the impulse to return when I got so very lonely for what I once had. Ever the question: what is it I want? And what I want became what I had as I peeled back the lamina of heartstains. And as time continued to pass, gradually I began to understand. Gradually I began to remember. I am as flawed and beautiful as I can be in this human skein, and the stories I tell to become who I am are honest in their moment, but remain just stories. But that's the deal here. This is what we have. I am what is, and what I love becomes me. Doubt undoes the laces of love's shoes, but though it can be made to seem to stumble, this love was here before, and will remain long after the memory of falling down. This is the love that brings to you what and who you need as if rare earth. But much of the time, we spend trying to control our world according to our accumulated stories of it. We compare our stories with others and see if they see the same plots as we do; we doubt what we feel when our stories don't follow the ones we were telling before. We listen to tales of romance or woe, and we wish our stories were so or not so. And we have to decide. As long as we believe in our stories as real, and we try to control the characters instead of letting them be what they want to be, we will be in hell. Every time I try to write the plot for me and another, there is anxiety when the inevitable twists come, and it takes great effort to remember to let the story tell itself—just be true to the moment, for really, that is what we have.