In Progress

A lovely home that my friend Ramona and I walked by in Vancouver, BC.I am in the throes of an Apartment Love Obsession. It's been going on for weeks or months now, I'm not sure. My days are punctuated by small bursts to epic projects as I purge unnecessary things, curate and tend all of our spaces. Before my parents came to visit, I actually broke a toothbrush in half while cleaning the bathroom. The spice cupboard and junk drawer testify to no space being too small to escape attention, and the days we spent on the hall closet while my mom and dad were here prove that no project is too daunting.

My soul work these days grapples with a public and private existence, so perhaps my obsession with home is fitting, as sinking into my physical, private world grounds me and counterbalances the work I am doing online and onstage. I am simply along for the ride on both journeys, letting them run parallel and teach me as I go.

There are few things as satisfying as home makeovers, really, the pinacle being the Before and After Pictures. I keep kicking myself for not taking more Before Pictures so that I can have that satisfaction--that proof of progress--at the end when you get to step back and say, "Look: once a mess, then transformation, now beauty." But the Before and After Pictures are not the whole story, because minutes or hours later toys and blankets have made their way from their assigned homes onto stray surfaces or floors. One room sparkles while another is neglected.

This is the whole picture: A Life in Progress. Minor victories and major defeats, and sometimes the other way around.

When we share what we learn, it can have a similar effect--a Before and After Picture of the Soul, if you will. "Look: once a mess, then tranformation, now beauty." And it's not that it's untrue--it is quite true. The mess is real. The transformation is real. The beauty is real.

But this is the whole picture: A Soul in Progress. Minor victories and major defeats, and sometimes the other way around.

We clean what is dirty, we mend what is broken. All that is finished is temporary, and all that is yet undone reaches to the horizon like an ocean before us.