1x1xMark

       whatever finds me, reminds me

TODAY: Welcome to 1×1×Mark — a quiet space where thoughts return in the moments that catch me off guard.

The cypress grove on my morning hike is the place that always listens to me — a comfortable pocket of the bluff, a conduit from the subtle path to the open sea where things rise in their own time. Ducking my head under stretched out limbs, walking over freshly fallen leaves and dried matter, it is where memory, reflection, and feeling tend to find me before I find them. Where I feel each step touch the ground. A place where my silence is heard in every leaf and limb.  

This is where many of these small marks begin, and where I come to remember what should not be lost.

 This morning, walking the bluff with one of the dogs, I have those pauses where the mind clears just long enough for a thought to slip through. It happens on dog walks, in the car, or any quiet minute when a thought interrupts whatever I was doing and asks not to be overlooked. A small voice rises — not loud, but certain — and I even say it aloud, the way you talk to your dogs because they always seem to listen without needing the backstory.

I’m not someone who records things in notes or reminders. It doesn’t work for me. A thought has to speak first, and I have to answer — I’ll have to remember that one — before the day starts buzzing and whirling and pulling me forward. Most of the time, I lose it anyway. We all do. Life interrupts.

Sometimes a moment finds me — quietly, unexpectedly — and reminds me that these small thoughts won’t just be mine. They may find the ones close to me, too, in their own time and space.

However, some thoughts persist or always echo. They circle. They wait. They feel almost sacred — small pieces of meaning I don’t want to misplace. And I often think they’re meant to be shared or passed down so they don’t vanish. A reminder, a memory, or something that might land softly for someone else who’s been carrying something similar. Or a story from my own storybook that will be a once-upon-a-time story for the little ones and maybe theirs.

This begins 1×1×Mark:
one image, one thought, one moment that asked not to be forgotten.

A small mark saved — in case it finds a home in someone else’s day or someone else's future