Hope, the thing with feathers, never disappoints unless you let it leave. Here is what hope means to me. I sit out on my porch looking over into the trees and I hear the wind in the leaves and the sky is a lovely, dark blue and the voices of the kids playing on the street slowly fade away and my breath slows down and I look up into the sky and think I just want to fly into that wonderful, cavernous sky as if the sky itself is calling me to lose myself in all of it and only my thoughts and my anxieties hold me back.

What is this thing that is calling me? It is a kind of freedom I suppose and yet people tell me I am a slave because I'd rather listen to that voice than the voice they try to sell me. It may not look like freedom, but to me it is. Am I living in a fantasy world? Perhaps, but I prefer my illusions to their realities. The love I feel is real enough and maybe it is more real than the things the world calls love.

Where is this taking me? Well, friend, I'm going home. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon and I hope that you get home, too, and that is why I can be such a jerk sometimes and ask you stupid, annoying and irksome questions and why I wont let you just go along to get along.

Sweetie, sweetie, can you hear me? I wouldn't say these things if they weren't important. I've seen where you're going; I've been there. There is something terrific at stake and the joy that is in store for you is more than I can describe, but you need to take it. It wont sit around forever.

Reading
Wishing
Plotting