By all outward accounts, I am Julie, female, 48, computer programmer, runner, cook, gardener, with a mortgage, two sons, a long time love, and one ginger cat. By my own reckoning, I am an adventurous soul, an endless possibility in a five foot four jacket, a big bleeding heart so full of emotions and experiences that it sings and breaks and explodes into spasms of joy by turns. Here's how I see it: Lucky me, with my painful experiences, with my outrageous highs and lows. Lucky me to have had my own small self stretched beyond recognition by the numerous and sometimes large people who have moved in and loved me. Lucky me to have laughed till I was doubled over and choking, to have made art, to have lost people, to have gained empathy, to have dropped acid, to have baked bread, to have had a lover paint stars on my ceiling, to have sat in one spot on the side of a mountain for an entire day, to have felt my spirit float out of my body, to have tasted a perfect apple, to have run twenty six point two miles without stopping, to have had some time to think, to have eaten peas and blackberries off the vine, to have been scared witless, to have been drunk on red wine, to have watched comets, to have seen the Mona Lisa, to have swung on a bipolar rope vine between spastic restless energy and perfect peaceful contentment, to have hopped a train, to have been cut, bruised, bleeding and permanently scarred doing crazy shit I love to do, to have sat by a lot of fires and torched a lot of marshmallows and told a lot of stories. Mostly, I have taken a pretty average normal life and imbued it with all kinds of magical and mystical meanings because that makes it more fun and a better story. Lucky me with my magic life and my stories.