an exercise in optimism

I am thankful for the ocean, thankful for all the little life forms swimming in it, thankful for bonfires and their ability to warm cold feet. I am thankful for little girls who call sparks "crumbs of fire" and the ocean "a big puddle." I'm thankful for the human ability to form community so quickly. I'm thankful for breakfast and for bad coffee at small diners. I'm thankful for laughter. I'm thankful for sadness, the way it cracks you open so wide that everything beautiful falls right in. I'm thankful to have eyes to see and ears to hear. 

an excerpt from this week's memo:

I own a single bottle of nail polish. I bought it after years of never painting my toenails, never considering my feet something worthy of adornment. It was just such a beautiful color. Brilliant Bordeaux, it’s called, a deep bodily red. The color of heartstrings. I identified strongly with that color. I began painting my toenails all the time, using just that one bottle. I fell in love with my feet, often looking down at them as I walked or propping them up on coffee tables to wiggle my painted toes in the lamplight and watch the dance of tendons beneath skin.

            My bottle of nail polish enjoys a high place of honor amongst my possessions. Like my poster of elephants silhouetted against a backdrop of mountains, my custom-painted lamp dripping with beadwork, my Birkenstocks, my hiking boots; my nail polish evokes my identity.  I keep it on the bookshelf, right next to my favorite novels. I like to see my intelligence and my physicality side by side. I can be intellectual and sexual; I am a mind and I am a body.