Clippings...

In looking back through my journal I found a poem that I had written as a reflection to my experience on ORS (Organization of Residence Students---a position that changed me more so than any other experience that I have had in life). I found the poem remarkably accurate to how I felt prior to leaving for NZ and thought that I would post it on here. The second excerpt is a quote that I have in my travel journal and very much explains my own views on how to live life.

April 6th, 2006
the beginning
standing alone
shaky and tired
months of invigoration
integrity
isolation
reunification
and now these friendships
freeze frame
no doors are closed
with distance the only obstacle
a sunday meeting no longer mandatory
i'm free but longing to be captured
lost, yet forever found
forever changed
holding on to forever memories
ironically united by the end
which lay as the beginning
to new and shaky months

"The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver
I don't know exactly what a prayer is,
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?