This morning I realized it's been four years since these feet stood on foreign soil. I had grand plans for this summer but, as usual, grand plans fail when they're more of a noun than a verb. I dream of spicy food and dirty streets and children babbling in different languages. And jet lag. I dream in nouns.

In the office we listen to an eclectic mix of music and every once in a while a song comes on that reminds me of the happiest summer of my life. In it I spent the mornings in class, the afternoons life-guarding poolside, and the evenings on our front porch reading poetry by candlelight and sorting out deep life issues. Nothing was ever resolved, unless you count happiness. We resolved to be happy. And we were. David Gray was the soundtrack to our happiness.

I say to my pretty officemate yesterday that I just haven't gotten peace about a decision I made recently. Peace feels like no pit in my stomach, it tastes like nothing, and it sounds like laughter and excitement. Instead I'm just feeling like in order to bring a harvest we start with a plow and maybe it's time to put my hand to one.

It's hard, sometimes, to not feel like the leftovers are my portion. I have a file-folder of things I dream about, blues and greens and art and hydrangeas and little girls names. I stopped putting slips of paper in it over a year ago, it was too painful to see things I dreamed about become others' realities. The problem was, I didn't give up what was already in there and I walked forward, fists clenched around the dreams, growing more discouraged each time someone took my idea and passed it off as their own (as though hydrangeas were my idea in the first place: who was I kidding?).

I've been thinking recently, though, that unless I start making my life more of a verb and less a file of nouns, I will go to the grave like the Pharoahs. Buried beneath of mountains of gold, horded treasure held onto until the bitter end.

...for where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also. Matthew 6.21