Paradise

"I still believe in paradise. But now at least I know it's not some place you can look for, cause it's not where you go. It's how you feel for a moment in your life... and if you find that moment... it lasts forever..."

I think I did find paradise. And it's lasting forever, alright. There are details that go askew in the days passing, but the paradise never goes away. I think I even found it right around the time The Beach came out. What with the year 2000 being such an adventure and all for me. And Heather.

Taking a Greyhound to New York- and beyond to Connecticut
New York City
Going to London, Paris, Madrid, Granada, Amsterdam, Emmeloord, etc...
Coming home to New York City.... to meet my dear sister.
Our luggages both being lost. Mine by the plane, hers by the bus
The house burning down.

Kerouac-ing it in the city with new friends Jonathan of Grove street and Angel and Angela, two best friends who I had met in Spain just a month earlier (weird stuff happens when you travel)

Boo dying, the little dear one.

After that, especially later after September 11th, after trying to live in LA, Portland, the haunted Sonoma county apple groves, trips to New Orleans, around Mississippi, - somehow all these travels and our family's hikes and camping trips and dealing with 2 of my ex whiny boyfriends before I could find a braver type, after all these and all of this, paradise is here. Permanently.

Pretty much now I can write songs about it. Songs to aging children come, now.


What I search for now is an almost daily togetherness, a tribe of people in which:
there is piercingly true moments of love and a spiritual feeling
a tribe that is peacefully kind and in love with each other and all the human talents and beauty
with a love in that tribe that shoots straight from the heart

Family is those things for sure. But I want to expand it. I am hoping the paradise in my heart will help build it. I think I am 70 percent there.

(and not like in The Beach)

love you all!