So many of my posts smack of egocentric musings. This one is no exception.

The other day I realized that August 8th 2012 was a pivotal day. It's become a demarcation: Life then and life now. It's like saying, "Oh that happened before David was born." Or, "I did that before I moved to Laguna Beach." Or, "I did that before my diagnosis."

Significant events give us an outline for reference. The tools we're given are similar to diagramming a sentence - to include predicates and phrases and clauses and fragments and comma splices and fused sentences and simple sentences and compound sentences and complex sentences and compound-complex sentences...

It's just a guess, but I think I'm a compound-complex sentence with lots of fragments and splices and fusions.

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Okay, so this is what I enjoy so much about writing. This started out as a soppy look-back of the past 13 months and now I'm up to my eyeballs with sentence diagramming.

Below is a link to a marvelous NY Times article. My laughter rippled across the Cumberland Plateau as I read Florey's article about sentence diagramming. I quickly determined I'd require a GPS to decipher and negotiate her examples.

Taming Sentences

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The photo I've included in this post designates a time when time changed.

My lungs didn't like the altitude of Santa Fe, so I landed in the ER. Because I have a friend with IPF, when I read the CAT scan interpretations, I knew in a flash that my life had just stepped into a huge cow pie. I knew in an instant I had a serious illness with no good recourse.

It was during those lingering days in Santa Fe that I breathed with difficulty its rarified air, and swooned for its restorative and spiritual lusciousness. A simple stroll was a death march, but there were places I wanted to see and touch and taste and smell and hear.

My last day in Santa Fe I had all to myself. My itinerary included the New Mexico Museum of Art. I also wanted to treat myself to lunch at The Palace, which I did alfresco so I could immerse myself in the street sounds and the flurry of colors that have eternally danced throughout Santa Fe even before Santa Fe was Santa Fe. (Oye! How was that for sentence structure?)

But the very best part of the day was sitting on a stubby wall at town center. From the quintessential gazebo, lively music streaked to the feet of locals two-stepping to bright rhythms. I could tell the participants and observers were a mixed demographic gathered for the pure pleasure of sharing sunshine and happy toes and generous smiles. It was a privileged moment.

The woman seated beside me - well, we gravitated toward each other. She was a longtime local. We chatted ever so briefly but the words were important. I told her I was ill and concerned I'd never be able to return to Santa Fe. In a mystical moment she took my hand and locked her eyes with mine. With no grammatical contractions, which made her words seem more important, she said, "You will come back and you will sit here and the sun will shine and the music will play and the people will dance... and you will be here."

Well, something like that...

Of all my lifetime of photos, this is one of my favorites. I'm sitting with a kind stranger who planted a seed of hope that continues to flourish in my heart. Talk about faith in action!

We all have these moments, don't we? Think about yours and embrace it.

As always, thanks for listening.