Being Here Now

So, I've been back "home" in Toronto for just over 24 hours now, but I find myself feeling kind of like I'm not even in my own body... It's not that I'm sad to be here - on the contrary! I'm so thankful to be back home in my beautiful apartment, that is in the house belonging to my lovely friend Guntar, and to be making plans to get together with many of the lovely other great friends that I have here. They are what makes my life in Toronto so wonderful.

No, more likely than anything else, I am simply tired. A little overwhelmed, probably. I find myself wanting so desperately to simply be able to just Be Here - if even simply in my own flesh and bones and space - and yet the reality of my life right now is that my brief time here in Toronto must be spent making plans and working towards my future travels. Tracey and I leave again this Saturday morning for the whirlwind Halifax leg of our "World Tour". Before the week is up I must also get it together and set the wheels in motion for my French and UK work visas, which require the relinquishing of my passport temporarily. I will be needing said passport in less than 2 weeks for my road-trip to Vermont (Thank you American Government for that new law!). And then there are those pesky school applications to follow-up on... I don't even think I want to go back to school next year anymore!

In any case, it's hard to Be Here when my thoughts and actions must be focused on other places and other times. Nevermind the fact that I barely even have the time to miss New York. Though I do, quite a bit.

To comfort myself, I have been stealing moments here and there (damnit, smoking a cigarrette every now and then... Bad, Bad, BAD!) and listening to my ipod... I put on the playlist that I listened to most when I was wandering the streets of NY, and I lose myself in the cheesy, yet lovely lyrics of Whitney Houston's "My Love is Your Love"... And I comfort myself with thoughts of all the beautiful people I know and have known and the times we've shared and what wonderful things are still to come...

And I listen to Beth Orton's "Central Reservation Line" and am reminded that "Today is whatever I want it to mean..." And I remind myself that wherever I am, it's best to simply Be There. And I even find myself doing my own version of "praying", to the universe - promising that I will continue to give all that I can with this life of mine, if things continue to be so beautiful and so full, all around me. And so...

If tomorrow was judgement day,
and I'm standing on the frontline,
and the lord asked me what I did with my life,
I will say, I spent it with You...

Peace Everyone.