Quick & Simple.

Happy New Year, Friends and Family! And Old Year, too!

Found this picture of me with my parents on New Year's Eve 1966. I guess I really had to pee. Still do. How little changes.

2006 held lots of endings, beginnings, cross country moves, false starts, highs and lows, and a constant need for redefinition of what it means to be truly fluid in one's approach to life.

What am I thankful for? Every single bit.

AIDS/LifeCycle. My friends. The difficulties, the successes, the reconnections and the realizations when aspects of one's life have needed to change. My family and their unconditional support and love in a situation that would make many shake their heads in lack of understanding.

My health, my strength, my sense of humor, my ability to learn from my history, my ability to maintain hope and gratitude even in the most dire of circumstances.

The chance to work in New York. The latitude to decide to return to San Francisco. A wonderful job opportunity working at a cool place for great people with integrity and heart.

My dog, a sweet and gentle companion, happiest when he is just by my side, wherever that may be.

What do I wish for 2007?

Peace. Laughter. Good music. Learning and understanding. Sunny morning bike rides. Rotisserie chicken and fish burritos. Bills paid on time. The ability to save. Walks at the beach letting Fugee chase the gulls. Stability. A job that allows me to be me--and allows me the chance at a more stable lifestyle, working with and for people I respect.

Time with family. With friends. Simple, honest, present. A return to a more active lifestyle. More fresh air, less "settling".

That's about it.

And I wholeheartedly wish every success and love, moments of quiet and energy, heart and compassion, for you. You make the tapestry of my life rich beyond compare.

I'm heading cross country on the 3rd. Yahoooooooo, Budget trucks! Connecticut has been a strange and entirely unexpected adventure for 2006, and I cannot express how grateful I am to have been with family for four months, and to have reconnected with old friends and lost relatives. Just great.

Hey- if you'd like my email updates from the road, let me know. I will ONLY send them if you say you'd like to read them. If you'd like to just check in occasionally, that's cool too. Just check out http://hermesbrainbelch.blogspot.com for the latest minutiae and musings eddying through me noodle. (I won't be offended if you opt out. Email, while an inferior method of keeping in touch, is one way of maintaining the ties to those who matter to me.)

Thank you for being.

Peace/Namaste

Craig
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craig goward hermes
“In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man’s skin,—seven or eight ancestors at least, and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson