A few minutes ago, I helped a horsehose crab. It was stranded upside down on the sand, unable to get back into the water. I nudged it with my foot. I saw its claws reaching out and grasping at nothing but air. Then I got a long stick and was able to push it back into enough water where I knew it could take it from there. We are like that. Stranded on the sand, so close to the water. We know something is missing, and we search all our lives trying to fill it with everything except the one thing that will fill it. We need the ocean. That is our true home. I feel like that crab right now. Very thirsty. jo

I took this last night. I look at the same scene each day, and yet the light keeps changing. It is always new. Sometimes it is bright blue and happy. Sometimes the storms roll in and the thunder and lightning rage around in the sky for awhile.

I picked up a rock the other day. I hear messages in rocks sometimes- just every once in awhile. I put this little rock on top of a huge rock by the water.

Its message to me was "Expect the Unexpected." I wasn't sure what that meant, but I thought I'd better keep my eyes and ears open.

So 10 minutes ago, I grab my camera and head out to my rocks, and what do I see but a couch in the water.

LOL

I might look as if I am looking for something, when actually, I am just enjoying the view. This may or may not change depending on the day you ask me.

My God I am certainly going through some sort of storm! I keep running outside and taking pictures. I could just lie down and bury myself in the dirt and the sand and the sky. Refusing to get up until I was healed. Sometimes I want to do that as weird as it sounds. I feel very sick right now, blazing hot with the strongest internal fire, fighting CFIDS, which I have had for a long time. The symptoms of it are intense and severe, and there is nothing like it to plunge one deep into the underworld. Today I wrote and wrote and wrote in my journal. I stood outside and prayed some strange prayer to the wind. I felt myself connecting with nature in the most profound way. Who knows if this is making me crazy or making me sane. It is not a time of hearing what I want to become. It is a time of hearing what I feel. It is not a time of production, accomplishment and output. It is a time of deep inner reflection and doubt and work and struggle. It is not the time for having it all together, it is the time for falling apart. I am living in my own myth, going deep into death in order to face the dragons and come back with some new healing to offer. And in some ways, the death is also literal. I feel this illness trying to kill me everyday. I just don't feel like it's my time to go yet. I think CFIDS does this, it puts one through the unimagineable. It has put me on this path, and all I can do is give up control. The ego cannot ever accept these lessons. But it has no choice. So I surrender to this path and where it is taking me. I have suffered much. There is a fine line between having a breakdown and having a breakthrough. Sometimes we teeter on the edge. It is the courage to go to this place, that shapes me. I love life. I am full of hope and appreciation. I am also miserable in this illness. I know suffering beyond words, intimately. The sky is getting darker. I don't know what is next. I wait, and listen. "I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship." Louisa May Alcott jo

photo c jo davidson poem by Rumi Hey The grass beneath a tree is content and silent. A squirrel holds an acorn in its praying hands, offering thanks, it looks like. The nut tastes sweet: I bet the prayer spiced it up somehow. The broken shells fall on the grass, and the grass looks up and says, "Hey." And the squirrel looks down and says, "Hey." I have been saying "Hey" lately too, to God. Formalites just weren't working.

Why is everyone in such a darn hurry? What is the THERE that everyone wants to get to? And when they arrive, what do they find? I never knew I was a turtle until life changed everything. Then I looked in the mirror. I was different. They say the turtle wins the race. But maybe there is no race. Maybe the turtle knows this. What if I never accomplished another thing other than breathing? That would be weird. What would that mean? Who would I be? What am I really trying to say here? I have no idea. It's a thought and a question I am asking, and it will fly away like the wind into another day.