Feel the connection...

Dear Friends;

I sent the following letter to my Pen-Pal. He is a great man that I have never met. We have shared travels and stories and many holidays… All through correspondence… We have seen pictures, but never laid eyes on the real faces of one another… Much the same as it is with so many of us here… I don’t know why this particular letter was impatiently jumping up and down to be shared with the world at large… But it was…

Perhaps it was that part about what I was wearing… I once told another Dear Friend that the colors that you wear say so much about you… The vibrancy of the color says a lot. The choices in color say much, how a person wears those choices says more... But I was sending this letter to a person who wears khaki almost every day… Not by his choice of mood or personality, but by his choice in life. Perhaps it is much the same thing as he is a soldier… A true knight protecting others… I think that even though his body is covered in khaki, his heart is as vivid as the sunrise and as big as the night sky…

So please, I invite you to read my latest letter to this incredible man as he is getting ready to once again be parted from his loved ones for great lengths of time… He is tired and weary and I am sure, as we all are in such situations, a little lonely… But even still he is great…





Dear Friend;

The sandcastles building was canceled today due to the weather... Sorry about that... But something is telling me that you would not have been able to make it... Perhaps when you get back...

I hope that everything is going well with all of your preparations to leave again... It must be difficult to be on the go for so many long hours... At least it is not 20 below and so cold that everyone's eyes hurt from walking to get the mail... My friends back east are having a difficult time of it with the weather. (Makes me remember that there are some really nice things about So Cal... Especially this time of year...)

I'm kind of bummed about the sandcastles... I was going to borrow the three year old son of one of my best friends... She is newly pregnant and having a terrible time of it, so it works well for everyone... I get to borrow a small child to be silly with and she gets to rest and take pictures... I miss my brother's kids terribly and my friend's son is a doll. He says that he is going to marry me... I don't think a girl could get a better offer... Who can resist a small face covered in peanut butter and cookies smiling up at them? Perhaps I am just a sucker...

So another time to go and build this monster castle... I have been getting friendly with the Burning Man community... Getting in touch with my inner hippie I suppose... Not that I really needed any help with that... I have the market cornered on whimsical artist, it is not a big reach to colorful hippie of the new millennium. If you saw what I was wearing today you would only laugh and agree... Orange... Lots of different shades of orange... A little burgundy and pink and cream... But really... Orange... Layers of it.

I like the bright colors when it is so gray outside. They make me feel all lit up inside. So today I look like the sunrise. There is even just a hint of blue in the stripes of my skirt. It is from Israel and every time I wear it people stare. They either love it or they hate it...

But who doesn't love the sunrise? When everything is layered and new and one color flows into the next? It doesn't matter where you are in the world... There is always the sunrise... It's that promise of the new start to things... Another chance, because it is another day...

I love the night sky when it is filled with so many stars. It is what shows you that we are so small in the grand scheme of things... That there is so much awing wonderment out there beyond us... It can take a person's breath away... At least it takes mine away...

But it is the sunrise that makes us a part of that greatness... Wraps us in blankets of vivid color and speaks of the world the way is supposed to be. It is so bold and daring as to suggest that we could even paint our own version of it with how we live our lives...

The sunset envelops us in a similar way... Reminding us that everything that we did that day had an effect in some way... But I like the idea of a start for things, rather than a finish... So I like the sunset, but it is the sunrise that I love...

See... Artist/hippie...

Either way... At least it is something that we can share with anyone in the world and it transcends distance and language and everything else. I like that. I like that if we choose to pause for just a moment we can see such beauty. Even when it is so cold or so barren that there are no flowers or rainbows or even other people... You always have the sunrise...

So there you go... That is where I am at for now...
I hope that you are well where ever you are...

Big hugs,
Ais