my mind feels spastic, all over the place.
it's a good thing, mostly.
except when it comes to sitting down and trying to write about one specific thing, when there are so so many things.

like this beautiful book i just read called traveling mercies by anne lamott. her writing is like taking a deep breath of fresh air. she's so candid and has this really neat way of making all her life's experiences sound so sacred, so real and raw, so interwoven into this beautiful long story. words don't do justice to the way her writing moves.

or the way this poem makes me feel, which i found at the start of her book:

listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is
- w.s. merwin

can you feel the energy flowing through it? do those words ignite something inside of you like they do me? do you feel it? amongst every broken place, do you feel that sort gratitude in its great entirety? it's so strong and beautiful. and again, i have no words to do it justice. its just that feeling inside of me. sacred.

anyway. i didn't take away any profound sort of intellectual knowledge from this book, which often happens for me. but i feel like i was handed someone else's soul, like i made a lifelong friend, like someone sat with me awhile and stoked the embers of my spirit alive. that's just amazing to me.