i have been realising lately i fear the dissapearance of poetry in my life. i somehow thought that it has to go away one day, like peter pan. it just occurred to me that it doesn't have to. you just have to work hard to keep it. you have to never stop going places you've never been, never stop doing things you've never done, never stop inviting great people into your life whether for a day or a lifetime. you have to not let your career or your partner or your "roles" in life define you away from yourself. you have to bring all of those people/things into who you are rather than evolving away from yourself. do things a different way than you think you're expected to if you have to. everyone will survive.

and it is a relief to realise it. by acknowledging that it is possible to keep that alive, it gives weight to its existance in the first place. someone suggested to me once that i "need" this stuff in my life with a slight negative undertone, the way you would say someone needs drama in their life. and i have thought about it on and off for awhile now, pondering the possibility that they are right and that i am setting myself up for dissapointment when "real life" takes over. but i have come to the conclusion that i do "need" this stuff in my life because it is real life. life can be whatever we make it. i hope to always choose poetry.

the challenge lies in not losing sight. forgetting. getting caught up in day to day and not even knowing that you are starting to believe a new definition of life or of yourself that is really just a coping mechanism. i realised on orcas that i had begun to do it to an extent and though it is frightening that we can do this and not know it, it is also comforting to know again that we can do whatever we want to do if we don't let others set our parameters. it's just not always easy, but that's the difference between never growing up and growing up without ever losing the child in you.