june beats

June 2, 2016 - Daily Notes, From the Editor

I have a date this weekend. The kind with live music and most likely a bit of bourbon. The kind that matters. And also doesn't. Except when it does. I will probably wear boots.

We go around in circles. I think everyone does. Earth flirts with the sun, leaning in a little closer, tipping away, then returning again in June. Love usually comes back around. If we have done our work, if we are willing to be grounded and vulnerable, and if we pay attention, we see the truth: It is always changing.

"What are you noticing in your body right now?" she asks with a soft smile. She holds my gaze and I close my eyes. It always comes down to this. No matter how many ways I weave my mind through a situation searching for words to resolve it into a story I can tell with a beginning and end, the truest answers never come from inside my head.

So I place one hand on my heart and feel it beating. I had not noticed how it was feeling until this very moment. Like touching a spot of flesh so sensitive it can detect the slightest change in pressure, the smallest shift in temperature. The rawness of loving another human is a thing I often find myself trying to either choreograph away from or steel myself to brace against. It is always a relief to be reminded I cannot.

The beat was like this: June-is-here. June-is-here. June-is-here. Life-is-here. Life-is-here. Life-is-here. 

"My heart feels tender," I replied. "I hadn't noticed that before. My belly feels nervous and excited, like butterflies. Somewhere in between these spaces I can feel my own strength. It is centered and upright and calm and assured."

I opened my eyes. 

"So that is how you feel," she mirrored. "That is what is true."

A tear came then, with a broad smile.

June hearts beat true. We must simply pause to listen. Let them be tender, nervous, excited and strong. For we are all of these things and more. We are always changing.

xo
laura

less is more

May 29, 2016 - Daily Notes, From the Editor

Sweet clover grows through the sidewalk cracks. Have you ever noticed that the bumblebees don't care where it roots? Only that it does and that it blooms.

Summer has arrived bustling with an abundance of sunshine and hope for longer days to bring love requited, success unfolded, creativity found, and accomplishments made.

I am watching my bank account hover precariously near not enough this year and remembering what my mother said about money. "It comes and goes, and wherever the numbers are, that's where you are."

I find myself walking to the coffee shop softly reciting the mantra I have adopted for the season. "Less is more," I hear myself whisper while the camera sways loyally from the pink scarf strap on my shoulder reminding me that creativity is right here, right now. It does not care how much money you have. 

That is when I spotted the clover blossoms. Cars whizzed by on busy Madison Street and neighbors I do not know spied me crouching down in this odd place to set my camera on the ground, point the lens and click the shutter. I noticed the bumblebees, like me, driven to gather up all of the nectar in life and make something good with it. 

xo,
laura

she says, what are you trying to do?

“What are you trying to do, be perfect?”

Photo by Bill Childers

"What are you trying to do, be perfect? she says. Because sighing, I erase the pencil line again. Because I bite my lip and scrunch the space between my eyes and hunch so near the page that my hair obscures the sketch of ... oh, it doesn't matter of what. (It was a trellis.) Her voice pulls me back. "No!" I shout, caught by the one who is always watching. I throw up my hands, and we laugh.

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Sarah Anne Childers is the online editor at luciajournal.com where she happily toggles between curating creatives as an editor and creatively curating ideas and the words they live in as a writer.

sarah@luciajournal.com