Where Do You Live?

I have become involved in a Moleskine art project. A Moleskine is like a diary or sketchpad, filled with blank pages. It is passed from member to member of the community - and each artist creates a piece of artwork on a page or two. The artwork can be drawn, cut graphics, written, pasted, or adheared from another medium into the book. Sometimes the Moleskine's have themes, sometimes they do not. The one I am working on - and sending off tomorrow has a theme. "Where do you live". I have attempted to recreate my 3 crayon drawings added randomly to the Moleskine. I am not much of an artist - but the point is to be creative, right? Besides these images, I added a page of text. Here in the format of a journal or blog, I have mixed the graphics in with the text.

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Where do you live?

I have no one residence, but live in a million places. The places I call home are places I go to often in my mind. They are places of solace, beauty, and acceptance.

I live in the cinnamon mountains and ocher chocolate canyons of the Sonora dessert; in the blooming pink-hazed spring orchards of the Sacramento Valley; in the velvet blue of Lake Tahoe and the glacial till of an Alaskan ice-flow. I live in the flash of a rainbow trout in a clear deep mountain spring and the pounding surf of the Pacific Coast.

I live in my words, which I send out into the Ethernet. Words of humor, encouragement, silliness, and prayer. I live in the minds of my friends and they live with me, no matter how far away, nor which spiritual plane they occupy.

I live in the food I prepare with love for all those invited to feast at my table. I live in the claret red of a smooth wine, the smoky mystery of a good scotch, and the effervescence of a sparkling champagne.

You will find me most alive whenever there is a still moment in church, with sunlight streaming through a stained-glass window; in the second of beauty just before a praise song ends; I live in the Bible passage that suddenly makes me see and the sweet acceptance and forgiveness of the communion cup and bread of Christ’s body.

I live everywhere and right here on this little piece of earth known as Raleigh, North Carolina. I live in the dogwood and azalea bloom, the summer crepe myrtle explosion of magenta, and the fast and furious thunderstorm that wipes ways the neon pollen or summer dust. I live in the jazz music that fills my house, the butter yellow of my living room walls, the mismatched yet harmonic hand painted tiles from Mexico lining my kitchen counter, the hardwood floors that gleam in the light and the bed that cradles me upon my return from a long trip.

I live in the Mississippi Delta – where time and culture move slow, like a hickory cure applied to barbequed meats. I live in the cotton blossom – open for one brief day before fading away. I live in the history of lint, picked and spun into the fabric of our life.

I live where I am loved … so I live here.