I have been feeling lighter lately. Maybe since last week? We have been granted an odd reprieve from winter this year and it is hard not to feel a certain lifting in one’s soul in such graceful weather, so I have considered the placebo effect. But no. While this unseasonably warm winter is certainly helping, the lightening is not situational as far as I can tell. It feels positional. Like I am turning (or being turned), degree by degree, to gradually face a different direction. I don’t think I am on the move yet, but instead of filling my pockets full of precious, broken things, I am feeling a persistent, gentle presence, coaxing me to pause and lift my eyes and look around. A wisp of a finger on my chin. Look, there is a way you could go. Shh, shh, shh. No hurry. No rush. But see? See the soft road, ambling onward, dappled and kind? Maybe. It feels tempting to accept the sun. Consume it. Let it bake my bones white. To eat the red fruit and let juice run do...
We have gone to Mexico almost every year since I was 14. My parents purchased a timeshare in Cancun, and then later in Playa Del Carmen, which has allowed us to return every year to a familiar view, a familiar bed, a familiar cerulean ocean. It has been an incredible gift. This fixed vantage point has offered interesting perspective as well, watching how a landscape, a town, a way of life can change year over year, decade over decade. What seemed unchanging however was the sugar-white sand and the rhythmic, ageless beating of wave on shore. As it ever was. Always the same. Always the same. Always the same. But then one year a hurricane came and scooped away mountains of sand, pulling it out into the depths, somewhere. The shore, once soft and shifting, became a treacherous, rocky terrain of foot slicing, toe stubbing rubble and broken coral. It took years for the sand to return. At first a thin layer coated the craggy, broken shore. Then the sand gradually filled in some of ...
I didn’t really have words for a while. April 4th was coming. I could feel all my subtle, exploring attunements drawing back their fragile tendrils, closer to the body, seeking shelter, sensing a threat approaching. I was alert, but almost in a state of fight or flight, where crafting explanations or even processing what I was experiencing in the moment took too much from me and I knew I had to conserve my energy. In a way it was like being sucked through a straw. Pressure mounting. Everything narrowing. There would be no escaping it. The day was inextricably, inexorably coming. We knew we didn’t want to be home for it, so we went to the ocean. Someplace bigger than we were, someplace elemental. The air is different at the beach and when you breathe it in, you can almost feel the living medicine fill your lungs. It is soft on your skin. It makes you walk slower, breathe deeper, move through space differently. And Jonah was with us, just not all the heaviness we carry back ho...
Comments
Post a Comment