And so my scribblings in that little ring-bound notebook came to an end.  Three hundred and sixty five dawns had come and gone.  The notes began with the calamitous and irretrievable loss of a psychological solid-state “me” entity.  (See the free-fall.) They jotted themselves down in prose or poetry, as I explained in the about page.  Incidentally, I was more surprised than anyone to find that readers thought the echoes were “poetic”.

At the end of that year, Life sent a robber to divest me of the physical aspects of my identity, as though it were cleverly matching outer to inner.  I’d be lying if I claimed to be happy about this, but I was fairly philosophical – or so I’m told.  It was awfully inconvenient.  I learned what it felt like to be a refugee, a paperless person.  (Identity theft is an expensive thing to address – one has to begin by proving that one was actually born, and build up the official paper/image trail from there.)

All this occurred a decade ago.  Last year there was an impulse to post what I’d come to call the *echoes* on a blog.  It was the same kind of impulse that prompted me to scribble them in the first place; I complied unhesitatingly, having learned by this stage that Life’s agenda is totally beyond my personal comprehension.

And anyway, it was fun.  I love learning new tricks, and the folks at WordPress were always there to help.  Gratitude goes to the wonderkids who, without a trace of impatience, cheerfully answer one’s goofy questions on the WP forums.  And gratitude to whomever deemed that this little blog would serve as a good example of the ‘Manifest’ theme on the WordPress Themes pages.  When I look at the stats, I keep in mind that many of my visitors have probably come to see how the theme works, rather than to read the content.

But perhaps something of the perfume of this savage wisdom has wafted across cyberspace, regardless.  How else to explain the long list of followers?  Blessed be.

The question now is:  do I stop here or do I continue?  Perhaps it’s for my subscribers and readers to decide.  The *echoes* keep echoing; I keep scribbling. Do you want to continue to tune in?

I leave you – for the moment – with the last of my notes from that time, a decade ago.  I had been reading my favorite living poet, David Whyte, and this *echo* echoes forth from my embrace of his unique wisdom.  Homage!

awakening
in this now place, here
is as simple as this:

look and look again
for the self you take yourself to be

find every self’s substance
to be a reflection
in the mirror-light of looking

and at last
on knees of awe and gratitude
see your True Face

– miriam louisa