yes on my lips

“A writer must say yes to life, to all of life: the water glasses, the Kemp’s half-and-half, the ketchup on the counter.  It is not a writer’s task to say, “It is dumb to live in a small town or to eat in a café when you can eat macrobiotic at home.”  Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist — the real truth of who we are: several pounds overweight, the gray, cold street outside, the Christmas tinsel in the showcase, the Jewish writer in the orange booth across from her blond friend who has black children.  We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so that there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing.” – Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down The Bones

I’m heading to Boston and Salem for the long weekend with my mom, my sister & her husband.  Stepping out of my head and into the world with a yes on my lips.  Yes to road trips with baguette sandwiches and pumpkin muffins, yes to coffee in travel mugs, yes to driving under a canopy of yellow, yes to walking on a red carpet of leaves, yes to Boston pubs and beer, yes to pumpkin fields, yes to haunted walks with spiked cider, yes to October skies, yes to witches, yes to cemetaries, yes to life.