Timed Rhythm

We dream a lot as youth, dancing in the winds of time.  Thinking that days are long, and seconds are as long as the days of elders.  Now we are the elders.  We are the elder.  We are old.  I have become the person I used to gawk at in surprise about their age and how they could have lasted so long.  "You are 32?" I seem to remember saying once (or twice) to an innocent lady in a store somewhere in my long-past youth.  "Wow.  You are OLD!" Now, as I embrace this newly experienced 'oldness,' I realize that I was wrong as a child.  I was, after all, inexperienced and immature at the young age of 12, and would have had no solid knowledge of what 'old' really meant. The ironic thing is that I REMEMBER the feeling of judging age.  I remember looking at the 22 year-old at the restaurant and thinking that they were 'getting up there in age,' (an expression borrowed from my grandmother, I'm sure). And now, here I am.  Approaching ...

I love music. I play music, sing music, make music, remember music, associate life through music. Today I returned to my music for an evening and remembered how much of my life is tied up into the songs and notes I write. I can remember the time, trials, heartaches and passions of life while playing through my songbook. Why is music so powerful? Self Lesson #101: Record the best moments of living.

You could say that life is a roller coaster. It moves quickly, is inescapable until it stops and the seat locks are lifted, and it takes unexpected and unpredictable turns, drops, rises and spins. Tonight I wonder where I will be in a year from now. When I was in grade 2, I would never have guessed my surroundings would have changed so drastically from high rises and roses to cow pies and orchard flowers. Again as a middle school nobody, I would never have guessed myself a success at sports, books and theater. When I planned university I hardly knew Canada existed, and when I went to university, I never in a million years would have suspected I would end up in Korea, and then back in the states teaching. Nor at any of those moments would I have guessed myself brave enough to encounter hidden parts of the world, sickness in high mountain villages or language charades in public streets. I am what I did not expect or dream, have done what I never thought of or knew to be, and have becom...

There is nothing quite like the moment of time which just passed by. You cannot retrieve it again except from the realm of memory to observe and then place back in its store in history's vault. Time completed is passed. It is gone. Lost, in a sense, and found in another. Unlike the computer, who retrieves past and edits and resaves, time is not the same. Time cannot be edited except by belief. We can, of course change HOW we see history, but not what was actually there. What was, is what was, past, done and was. The last year has been multiple chunks of small pieces of time stuck together in a year's long, lengthy version of past. And my past this year, was intense. NEVER would I have guessed that I would feel so stranded as I did for the first 8 months home. Job applications, friend meet-ups, boys, books, pictures, memory, thoughts and breath were the fillings of the mind for those 8 months home. I thought about everything that crossed my mind ten times longer then the aver...

Christmas and New Years are both times of new beginning. As I begin again this journey called life I am beginning to wonder about my direction. Currently straight ahead is still in process, but to think ahead I wonder, what comes next? Do I jump off the end of the known into a world that I barely have touched, but love? Or, do I settle calmly down in a career that has caught me and accepted me? Maybe there is another option still unveiled? Christmas means family coming together in noise of laughter, beauty of giving, humble accepting, hearts open, minds communicating, faces relaxing. Christmas is the new beginning that started with the greatest gift ever given man: Jesus. New Year's is similar. It is life, in a sense, given again. a new start to an old life. This new year I'm goaling to learn more about life and love. To not be selfish, and to remember that giving is an act of heart, not hand.

The rush of the city traffic below my 8th floor Seoul apartment that morning was barely audible beyond the voices in my head telling me it was time to go. A city of 20 million people moved with seeming effortlessness behind the walls of my apartment, but I lay stuck in the thought of impossible movement. After two years adjusting to a completely foreign culture, it was now time to say good-bye to the 'foreign' that had become normal, and return to the 'normal' that now seemed so foreign. I lived in South Korea for two years teaching English, living famous, fighting only crowds, and always being pleasantly welcomed, admired, thanked, congratulated, honored and liked. In Korea I was a Western Superstar. Korea was my fifteen minutes of fame. However, to every 15 minutes of fame, there is always a last minute, and mine was realized that morning sitting in my apartment. My time in Korea had come to a close, for now. Two months later, my contract finished, I delivered my ...

Hello! I am Amy. This magnificent introduction (above) actually took four paragraphs rewritten three times to arrive at.  It is simple and fascinating and the best introduction to myself of all four paragraphs prior.  There is more to it, but for any person to reveal all themselves in one, two...or four paragraphs is practically impossible.  And yet...this very simple statement contains me.