beads and things...

They hang on my wall collecting dust and memories.

I have never worn them, not once.

These aren't the only ones.

There are the big silver beads on leather that I brought back from India and gave to a woman named Mary.

When she passed away her grand daughter sent them back to me with a beautiful note saying how much she had loved them. And that she wanted me to keep them for her.

There are the cherry amber beads on twine given to me by the chief of a Zambian village as a gift of thanks for my visit to do an art project with the children there.

There are the antique ivory beads, that I would never wear but they are beautiful even though they represent the senseless slaughter of endangered species.

There are the ones that where purchased in Tanzania from a woman who needed to feed her children...

Will I ever wear any of them?

I do not know.

But each strand has the ability to take me right back to the moment and the place.
The people, the sensations, the colors that permeate the air of the place I happen to be at the time.

Hold on to the moment I tell myself every single time I find myself in a new place, a new situation.

These moments are precious.

Respect and cherish them...

be grateful for the opportunity to experience them.

a life led...

She had been a child of the sixties and by all accounts she was still just as unconventional now.

Through out her life she had traveled the world. Country by country, continent by continent.

She had walked with wild cheetahs and been bitten by a tiger.

She'd been to deserts where once upon a time elephants and lions had both roamed.

She had helped release leopards back into the wild.

She had been tickled by prayer flags in Nepal and Tibet.

And stood at the Ganges river as families said goodbye to loved ones during cremations

She'd roamed the cemeteries of Mexico at night during the Day Of The Dead.

She'd stood before the Acropolis and The Pyramid's

And been showered by the spray of Victoria Falls and drifted down the Zambezi watching hippos suddenly surface only inches away.

She's tended to baby elephants in Thailand and viewed the Buddha's tooth in Sri Lanka.

She'd walked through the souks of Morocco.

And visited the islands of Greece,

and had her camera confiscated in Japan by armed guards.

Who knew what she'd do in the next chapter...