hot damn

the most incredible necklace sent to me today, by the beautiful Patchouli Princess.

"I have only slipped away into the next room.
Whatever we were to each other - that we are still.
You are you and I am I
Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh, as we always laughed together at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me and pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect - without the ghost of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was, there is absolutely unbroken continuity.
What is death but a passing?
Why should I be 'out of mind' because I am out of sight?
I am just waiting for you for an interval -
somewhere very near - just around the corner.
All is well.
Nothing is past.
Nothing is lost."

~

so i came home tonight,
with the wind whipping and the sky threatening to storm again...
and there sitting on our table was the mail that my male brought in...
and in that mail... was a sunflower yellow envelope.
a bulky one.
it was like my birthday all over again!
it was such a surprise ~ I had no idea that I would be getting a letter... much less a gift!
and i opened it softly,
unthreaded the blue ribbon wrapping a beautiful rainbow handmade paper giftwrapping...
holding my breath...
and there, sitting there,
was the most perfect necklace anyone has ever made for me.
it almost brought me to tears ~
dearest patches had made me the most incredible necklace, with four blue stones, and the most divine silver pendant...
look! just LOOK!



and just today, i was thinking to myself...
this really isn't a bad world at all. it's really filled with beings bursting with love.
and some of them are like fireworks, showering the world with colour.
Patchouli Princess is one of those people.

I am so very grateful for being thought of so fondly, and being sent such a gift of love so unexpectedly.

~

Me and Lile have been having "Share your Photos" days at work.
Today I brought in my old old photo albums, and I showed her my teenage years.
And you know what?
I realised how many people I did know. How many friends I have had.
How many people gleefully entered my life, and danced with me for a while.
Or just dressed up with me.
Because, oh yes, there was a lot of dressing up.
Dressing in drag, in heritage, in flamenco, in retro.
Anything we could make up from my mum's trusty boxes of dress-up clothes.
So many succulent guys fill photos too in their resplendent dress ups.
For my older sister's eighteenth birthday eight of us dressed in drag, my cousin Andrew in women's lingerie,
and we went and sat on huge bales of hay by the side of our deserted country road. And every hour or so when a car went pass, we'd jump up, and wave frantically, laugh outrageously.

And I just thought.
Hot damn I have had a blessed life.
All the time I thought I was plain and weird, introverted and strange,
when really I was, and am, remarkable, with remarkable friends.