alice lin once told me "you are very sensitive and fragile. it's okay, in fact it's really beautiful and people relate and respond to it"

i guess it is beautiful sometimes but today it is uncomfortable.

my dad is moving. the nice thing about that is the fact that i will be able to visit him any time i want. currently to get to his house i have to either drive for 10 hours (literally!) or fly to oakland and then drive for 4 hours. either way sucks and i need to see him more often than two times a fucking year so i am excited that his new place is 20 minutes from an airport! just writing about it gives me a tightness in my chest and a lump in my throat~the idea that i can go, even if just for a day.

the new house is in sacramento, which from my earliest childhood memories was a pretty uneventful place but a friend recently told me that sacramento is really beautiful these days. i like the idea of my dad being somewhere beautiful, although i can't imagine anywhere more lovely than mendocino where he lives now. i also like the idea of he and karen having more friends and places to go, they were so isolated in mendo, and karen likes to shop! i tried and tried to get them to move to LA, and they would but the business is still in the bay area so they can't be that far away.

feeeeel good these days. my heart is full, i am a lucky girl.

doing brave new things, taking risks, putting myself in the line of fire over and over again, in public and in private, and loving all of it. i am working hard at not hiding, not being invisible, but letting myself be SEEN. not in that busy, running all over town kind of way..but really SEEN, simply as myself, through loving eyes~take it or leave it. once in a while the thought comes to disappear, to hide under the bed, or retreat into ice cream and movie land..
i remember when i went back to school to study music. i had to get up and perform every day and some days i would just go into the bathroom and cry because it was too much. as if everyone could see inside of me. a mixed feeling of fear, excitement, and like a hermit crab whose shell had been pulled off~nowhere to hide. at the same time it was like i had crawled out from under rocks and the sun was shining on and through me so brightly that it felt as if my heart would break wide open from so much love and gratitude. that is what performing is like for me on a public level and it is happening more and more.

on a personal level i want that as well.
not to perform, or hide, or run away but to show up and to LOVE, fearlessly,
as myself.
to laugh, and to be a dork, and to help make someone else's life a little bit better than before they met me.
i feel. deeply.

the other night juli and i watched spiderman II, we laughed about how important it is to balance. to be a hero, an example, fight battles, lead the way for others, ask for help and LOVE...

i am really lucky. truly.