Part 1

My introduction to Sara occurred while traveling on the upper peninsula of Nova Scotia. We had both been exploring the small seaside town of Ingonish, drifting between structures that were beautiful as they stood against the sky and also beautiful because they hinted at their past: the careful craftsmanship of the carpenters that built and dwelled in them years ago. For several days I kept catching glimpses of another woman, blonde and about my age, as if we were being drawn to certain homes at precisely the same moments. It was my fourth day of wandering that Sara appeared on the side of the road before my rental car. She stood against the rocky shoreline, thumb out, eyes dancing, with an easel tucked under her right arm.

Part 2

Suddenly, she was in my passenger seat...as if by chance. But her presence felt so natural. It was instantly clear to me that this encounter was not the beginning nor the end of our journey together.

We drove and talked, the conversation deepening as time passed. Sara spoke of persecution; She had studied all over the world and discovered in herself a point of access that could carry her to places most “civilized” societies could never imagine. Her spiritual practice granted her access to connections and parallel stories unseen by the unwilling eye. Sara was able to travel, undetected, through parallel dimensions. I listened with admiration and a newborn outlook as Sara spoke. I soaked her up.

She had chosen this time and place to begin teaching me the ways of freedom.

That first encounter ended in a seaside shack with a shingled roof, the two of us deep in a wine haze, surrounded by empty oyster shells. Sara left me with a painting of a woman standing alone in a colorful field staring out over the ocean, which now resides on my fireplace mantle. Sara left, but the bond we formed in those few short hours would entangle our lives for many years to come.

Part 3

The second time Sara revealed herself to me was on a mountainside near Bozeman, Montana. It was a perfect day for a hike: the mountains were calling to me, and I listened. I drove to the trailhead, watching the snow-covered peaks in the horizon while on the road below the temperature was a squelching ninety degrees. I chose a five-mile hike that brought me through fields of brilliant wildflowers, back and forth across daunting switchbacks, and up to a 9,000-foot elevation, where at the summit a woman with golden curls and grey eyes stood awaiting my arrival. I drew back, astonished to come across a familiar soul in such an unfamiliar time and place. The strangest part was that this other woman was— and wasn’t— the Sara I’d met in Canada.

I stood in shock as she began explaining her transformation into this new form. Sara had fallen deeply in love with a vagabond that had taken her to the furthest corners of the earth, physically and emotionally. The two had explored ruins, licked icebergs, eaten exotic fruits... all while traveling through time and space in a ’53 Chevy. During this expansively beautiful love affair, the universe had tempted the lovers into independent internal shifts that caused their spirits to crossover the parallels without each other. Ever since that separation, Sara had been searching unimaginable distances, across time and space, trying to recover that love.

Part 4

The last time I saw Sara was in Key West, Florida. My singing career had brought me to “the southernmost point of the U.S.” to perform at a bar called The Green Parrot. Sara walked through the door while I was singing. Like before, she was both the same and different. Her eyes gave her away.

After the show we sat and talked for hours as cooling fans circulated the salty air. We took in stories of great fisherman, and remembered great poets of the past. Sara explained to me how my music had worked like a siren, calling her off the streets and into the club. She had been circling the globe for years, following any clue and reaching toward any omen that would lead her back to her love. In all this time she had never given up. She continued to believe that what she and her love had experienced was as alive and as urgent as hot coal to frozen skin.

Sara and I drank the night away in an unexplainable landscape, somewhere outside of the understood laws of the physical world. There was a confidentiality in that space, a whisper in the breeze, forgotten answers enclosing us. We approached and entered a realm without rules, only patterns that develop and expand like love or music. We summoned a call from deep within ourselves and sent out that call like warm radio waves. Together, we summoned Sara’s love.

Sara returned to the open arms of her lover the very next day. Hopeless, he had landed in Cuba to await a sign from Sara, some notion of where to search next. Our night of summoning, radiating love toward him, had reached him, and he followed the feeling to Hemingway’s house, a few blocks up the street from the Green Parrot. Sara found him in the morning with a six-toed cat happily asleep on his lap.

That was the last time I saw Sara, but she and I still keep in touch.

Part 5

Sara and her love settled in Woodstock, Vermont, where she now owns a quaint shop called Chrysalis that helps people discover their true selves. The years of heartache and adventure had brought Sara to the other side, standing beside her soulmate with the promise of new life.

To me, Sara is and has always been a life force that lives in me. She’s an embrace. She lives in the peace of truth, the hope that arises from understanding, and the beauty of patience. She burns like a flame. She does not tolerate extortion, racism, or degradation of any kind. I look to her as love. When I revisit our encounters, I walk away fulfilled. If you tilt your head slightly to the left, lean back to rest on your favorite pillow, and imagine her eyes, you will find peace at any given time.

Welcome to Sara’s Half Finished Love Affair…