January 13, 2009 @ 8:39am

I got off to a slow start this morning, not really slow but I was reading the end of Sigrid Nunez's book called The Last of Her Kind and I couldn't out it down, had to finish and as a result my whole schedule was shifted which isn't a bad thing just a change and change is inevitable.
As I pull away from all that is not in alignment with my personal mission, it becomes clearer to me that being focused is what I've needed for a long time. Also, I'm finding it easier to live life and it's as if this secret or philosophy was somehow lost on me. Today's affirmation from www.scienceofmind.com supports this: Today, I begin to live effortlessly. I release the need to control, and I turn to Spirit. I relax in the flow of divine goodness.
The flow, that's what I'm feeling, a sense of flow, a sense of being taken over by purpose and in each moment things come to me, old notes, old thoughts, mental clarity, physical agility, emotional balance, spiritual excitement and just a plain old good feeling of being myself.
It's zero degrees outside and as I walked to work, I felt warm as being on a beach in hawaii. There is a black SUV that passes me each day when I am walking home, my thought is this, there is a soul who owns a vehicle like and every time I see the automobile, I wish we could connect. I enjoy my walking, it's good for me and gives me time to think, time to come down from work and space to commune with nature. I like the way I breathe in the air, the way my body slinks through the winter experience and the way I feel at home in this town. How I began to re-embrace, what has always been my favorite place in the world until I lived in Washington, DC which became my favorite and will always have adear place in my heart but the truth is nothing usurps that feeling of your hometown especially when you return and rediscover all that is good about it after a period of concrete hatred. Ann Arbor is emperor-like, small yet clearly destined for greatness. The energy can only be described as molten pudding, in that things blend well, are smooth, go down easy and yet just on the brink of boiling yet full of good warmth and not too hot. The landscape is crowded with trees, curiously blanketed with hills and lakes that add scenery without taking over the cities nuance. Downtown has always been the heart of what I like about Ann Arbor, it helps that this is where my mother worked as a clerk for Jacobsen's department store, the place where she walked around with the swelling of her belly and my eventual arrival.. I came into creation in a department store which might explain why I'm extremely non-materialist and don't really care for department stores. Like my father, I create a list, I get in and I get out. This fact about him is among the handful of things I would ever know about him, these things I cling to and claim as my own, claim as things that connect me to him. Jacobson's was nestled on Maynard next to the Nickels Arcade which had no arcades which were popular during the time of my youth but is a type of place, almost like an indoor, outdoor mall. It's covered on top connection two sides that contain one store after another. I could never afford anything from any of those stores but a branch of the post office would be located there. My mother worked at the post office and there were times when we would meet her at work or she would take us to work and we ran up and down the arcade keeping ourselves busy. It's funny looking back because I have real memories of the arcade, although I have memories of Border's bookstore and not the international comglomorate that it has become. NO border's sat a small bookstore on state street, one or two doors down from the state theatre. I remember the place vividly because of two things, when you entered the front door, I always tended to trip on the slight hump of wood, never did understand it and never failed to trip over it either. Nonetheless, Border's is the place that cultivated my love for books, from as far back as I can remember, they always had book on sale outfront on tables or carts and inside the aisles were small but you could always find a corner. I read many books in that place and the very first books that I would actually own, would come from there and not because I purchased them but from a sales clerk who I suspect was the owner, who on occassion would give me books after asking why I didn't by any, I told him my mother couldn't afford to give me money. So, when I least expected and as I would trip out of the store, I would feel a light tap on my shoulder and turn to see a small brown bag and inside would be one of the books that I had read too many times to count. He wouldn't let me not take the bag and would usher me along. Of course, there was a time when I brought a book home and my mother whipped me and she marched me back to the store to give it back but was told that it was given to me. I wouldn't be allowed to go the bookstore after that incident but I would try my luck every now and then but it was never the same, I never saw the guy who gave me books and the new staff was only tolerant of my perusing, so I eventually stopped going. But I never lost my love for reading which was apparent this morning as I couldn't and wouldn't put the book down until I was finished. I always thought that all I would ever do in life was read books but then one day when I least expected I began to write my own stories and this is when the thought of writing came to be. I didn't think of being a writer but I did enjoy the act of putting words on paper and making up silly stories. I had no context for myself as a writer but I had plenty of recycled report paper from the post office. Pieces of paper about the size of an 11 by 17, with holes on each side that could be removed via the perforations. I wrote stacks and stacks of stories on that light green tinted pages, I wrote with pencils, crayons and occasionally pens, pens were in short supply back then. I recall my mother sharpening pencils with a knife and I loved it when the pencil was freshly sharpened, pointy and reading for staining the page with my creativity.
I am perfect and I am whole and I am complete. I LOVE ME.