Plans are useful and necessary to help us to achieve goals and better our lives. Every once in a while, I feel the tug of whimsy wanting me to abandon my plans and run off on a little adventure. Whether or not I follow its lead, I am always tickled by the feeling. And when I do embrace whimsy, I am almost always rewarded with some little treasure in the moment.

We are married to life. Our relationship to life may be the most intimate of all our relationships, more intimate even than with our parents, our family, our life partner, or our children. We are always in a context, always contained by life, always held in its arms. LIfe made its vow to you and will be with you until death do you part. The question is: What vow(s) would you make to life if you enter into this marriage consciously?

My writing often starts with sensory attention to the immediate world. I sometimes look around my house and see things in and out of place, reminders of projects in process, of a duty that needs doing, of an item needing care, repair, or one best discarded. And it is easy to fall prey to the demand of things and wait on the world. But it doesn't have to be that way! What if you dropped the struggle to shape your life and let the world wait for you?

In my late teens and early twenties, I often had a strong feeling that something important had happened or was about to happen, something of which I should certainly be aware, but it remained unknown. It was a demanding feeling that sometimes put me on edge. I escaped it by concluding that I must have dreamed something that remained unconscious. The feeling still comes on occasion to this day. I have learned to welcome these deep secrets as a sign of something ripening in the nether regions of my soul.

What if identity were nothing more than a shell for a hermit crab? When they outgrow the confines of an old shell, they need to find a new, larger one to accommodate expansion. What new or expanded identity is calling you to leave your old shell behind and find a new one?

One of the great gifts of the very young, a gift often reclaimed as we age, is the ability to look beyond "looks," to appreciate the spirit of a person and to recognize that the essential life force in each of us has the capacity to blossom no matter what season we might be in or what suffering we may have endured. I have come to love this essential life force, the human flame found in each of us, more than anything. What, or whom, do you love more than anything?

Why do children love to play peek-a-boo and hide and seek? It is the primal dance between the twin desire to hide away, to be the silent witness, and the longing to be found, as if we might be a sought after treasure, or be seen and be beheld in the eyes of delight. It is the key to flirtation and courtship, the whispered secret and well-known fact in the mating call of life. This is my poetic ode to the dance...