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To choose life is a testimony in and of itself. Evidence of something extraordinary and transcendental. To be alive and live another day is to believe in something beyond what the world want us to assume about its unkindness, genocide, discrimination, pain, suffering, loneliness, poverty, mental illness, [insert unfathomable hardship here]. Life is, simply put, gnarly. A colorful display of lights and swords swing from the sky. And still, I find enoughness when I think about how each and every one of our lives is an example of taking a stand.
A turning toward love, toward one another, despite.
Being alive and staying alive is a choice that we make every day. We don’t have to do it. We can numb out, escape, run away, hide, give up. Staying is a choice that requires courage. A choice that can feel like the most impossible task in large or even small doses. I see this in my very own being and how sometimes, and often, I don’t want to write. And still, I do. Because I must! If I don’t, I’ll perish. My heart will go first, and then my will. While I’m in this body, I want to be present, so I write.
This is one of those times. I feel lackluster in thought. To try and convey any kind of sexy meaning feels dense, thick, fruitless. My current feelings about the world and this life are so big. I feel like the only thing I can do about it is exhale more slowly all in an effort to create more space in my ribcage. Soften somewhere in my center so that I can better hold myself, my insides, the frequency, my dream, my staying.
I am visited by nostalgia today. It swarms me. Grief comes to embrace me shortly after. Similar to that of waves lapping the shore.
I was playing a game with my family over Christmas, and if I recall correctly, the game is called Things. This particular round’s prompt was “something I want” and everyone had to fill in the blank. I wrote god. Little g god. My family found this to be a curious answer. “Little g god, and not big G God?” I had to explain to them that I had reclaimed my relationship to any concept of God through god and god’s abstract nature in comparison to God.
I have let go and let god many times this year. I am humbled and better for it.
I have been asked to let go of people and places that I loved this year. Time and time again. Now, when the tides turn and something whispers to me about the possibility of an ending – a soft sideways half smile spreads itself across my face, as if to say, the only constant is change. As if to say, it is what it is and it is perfect. As if to utter a tired agreement in the name of a new day in all of its holiness, even if not yet understood.
The sun came out today for the first time in 16 days. I have existed in 5 different states in the last 16 days. My aura wisps through Montana, gives me a bird’s eye view perspective. I hear Wild Horses playing in the background of the movie that is my life. And for a moment I feel so free and expansive and on top of the world. And then, an insatiable hunger not even my gas station jerky can satisfy.
Like an unending beam of porcelain dreams.
After Christmas, I found myself in my parent’s living room. I stood there and stared for maybe three whole minutes. Like a video game character left on standby while the player runs to grab a snack. Peace settles into the foreground. I am joined by an ache like a piano that sits at the center of my chest, sometimes throat. It plays. Any other emotion, a layer on top of my newfound center. Sadness. Gratitude. Hope. Longing. Confusion. Wonder. Love. The absence of it.
I fight with myself about the justification of wanting to keep a thing that does not belong to me, because well, I wanted it so badly. The illusion of place dissolves as I drive across the country. Remembering that wherever I go, there I am. And I wonder, if I were to simply sit here for the rest of my life, would that be okay? And I recall a piece of writing that I wrote at 19 that answers my question saying that would be just fine in the eyes of space and time. The soft sideways half smile finds my cheeks, again.
I am tired. Tired in a way that suggests I will go to sleep and wake up tomorrow to a whole new day. And I’ll try again. My hands seem sleepy as they reach for the right keys. What are the right keys?
I promise, I know I’m not doomed. It’s just that I am learning how to deepen my capacity to hold the magnitude of things that illuminate me from the inside out.
Like a fracture in heaven.
I love you,
Pau
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Little 'g'od...remembering that wherever I go, there I am...deepening my capacity...Thank you, Pau for sharing your tender + beautiful words...