73.

[sometimes i'm moved by the spirit of others. tonight is one of those nights.]

it is a rarity in life to stumble upon kindred spirits, to say "now this person is my kind of people," and i may or may not be guilty of succumbing to cynicism in this cold New England city and feeling like I never could find it here. tonight, with old man winter slowly creeping in, i was reminded again of the power of the human spirit, the disarming nature of memory, and the unending power of love. tonight i sit and write filled with gratitude for the honesty that few people have the capacity of wielding. sitting on my makeshift porch (a southern girl's gotta have one of some kind) i celebrated the heart of a friend and the memory of a father who instilled some of the values that i have come to recognize as the elements of being a "good man" in his progeny. i met this friend, by chance, four short months ago and while the stars didn't necessarily align for us in the way we imagined, as roommates, we have developed a friendship that i recognize as a gift in this short life i have lived. it isn't often that i feel truly proud to know someone, and this particular friend makes me feel like there is a God who is trying to do right by me, just as i'm trying to do right by my daddy, and just as he lives every day with the glorious sunbursts of his father shining down upon him.

in previous posts i've talked about differences between "men" and "boys" and by that i think i mean this transition between adolescence and adulthood. maybe i mean the distinction between living by feeling and leading conscious lives, being deliberate in our relationships with everything on this earth spanning both people and practice. there is something, i think i've discovered tonight, that is also relevant to this constant wheel that turns in my mind. i think that coming of age, growing up, gaining wisdom, means we have to strive constantly for something more. bigger shoes to fill. we have to be driven by a love that we believe in. no, 21st century readers, i do not mean romantic love...i mean the essence of love, the driving force that demands we believe. some find it in faith, in their God or gods. some find it a search for achieving justice. others have experiences - generally, in the living i've done anyhow, it emerges as catalogs of loss - that allow these many forces to manifest into something greater than ourselves. certainties that radiate with such brilliance upon this flawed Earth that we do not posses the power to oppose.

tonight i was lucky enough to hear stories of love and honesty, and through these stories to bear witness to a past littered with experience, and to find myself in this chilly "fall" season sitting beside a product of love and deliberate goodness. it has never been so clear to me that the concept of what my daddy called a "good man" was in my presence and that those traits were instilled within this human being by his father. a long line of men with granite hearts that wavered not in contemporary struggles of hardship. i recognized in my listening that most of my greatest friends share this loss and tonight i celebrate the lessons they protect within their hearts and the degree of love and determination they carry with them every day they walk this Earth.

everyone needs such a driving forces. this world would be better if we all had heartstrings bound so tightly to the people, ideals, and love we believed in.