tiny hairs on the tomato stems are white in the morning light. basil leaves broad and satin, tilted towards the southern window. hot water poured over Earl Grey leaves, curled like seeds in a silver cradle. silky cow’s milk drops in, the whole fragrant mug waiting patiently on a table as the Bergamot and tannins infuse into the gently steaming mixture. peanut butter spread on store-bought english muffins (the homemade ones are long gone), melting into the doughy crags. tendrils of coffee-scented air waft across seedling tops, red armchair, rainbow beams of light from the crystal hanging in the window, laundry draped across the old metal rack, stacks of poetry books, cobwebs between the ceiling and the walls. breakfast has commenced.
Tag: writer
my only home
Day three of the flu. Bed-ridden. Starting to feel my creative brain itching to make new connections, to learn. It’s a welcome sensation, after weeks (months?) of focus-on-the-next-task-just-need-to-make-it-to-7pm-when-I-can-finally-collapse daily grind. Writing that out now, I understand why my body has succumbed to sickness. The Process podcast episode is late, I have emails I have to respond to, and I haven’t released my new song yet, but I am ignoring all of that (translation: attempting to ignore all of that) in order to take care of my body. I live here, after all. It’s my only home.
absolute annihilation
I don’t want to write tonight – I am not inspired. I have gotten burnt out from trying to get better at too many different things at once. There’s music, writing, podcasting, teaching, gardening, making money, and building relationships. If I’m not the best at every one of them, somehow my body will implode in on itself while the ground turns into quicksand and I disappear in under a millisecond. Somehow I know this will happen, at a deep, reptilian level. So, to avoid absolute annihilation, I attempt to improve everything I do, at all times. That shit is not gonna work. Now I’m lying in bed, super sick, because my body couldn’t handle it all. I don’t know how to stop. I wish it didn’t take getting this sick to force myself to stop. What is this thing propelling me forward?
all this will be ruins
All this will be ruins someday. The earth re-membering herself, re-calling her own Name. All this will be ruins someday. The bright red METRO MATTRESS DISCOUNT SLEEP SUPERSTORE sign will crack and sink into the soft forgiveness of the mud. Every Grande styrofoam cup will slowly settle beneath the dirt, snap into pieces, become one with bulging roots and galaxies of mycelium. There will be no plastic left, only vivid tangles of roots. Swelling. Sighing. It will all be ruins.
All this will be ruins someday. Every desperate, pavement-sodden parking lot will cry out in relief as burbling streams find their way through the concrete, saplings shove themselves up between tiny crevices, and grass sprouts up, along the perimeter, now in the middle, now in every possible direction. It will all be ruins.
All this will be ruins someday. Ruin, from the Latin word “ruere,” meaning “to fall violently,” turning into an Old English word meaning “act of giving way” and the Italian word “rovina,” meaning “to knock down, tear out, or dig up.” Ruins. What a relief to release the burden of progress and productivity. It will all be ruins.
All this will be ruins someday. A re-in-statement of the natural order of things. A letting-go of the chokehold we have on the world, this dangerous and exhausting myth of control. A digging up of all that we have imposed on Her. All this will be ruins someday.
May that day come sooner, rather than later.
what am I learning to love?
Love. How this word eats away at us. How we long for the definition, some clarity, something to land in. Is it too cruel to say that landing in love is a myth? Learning to love, on the other hand, is the entirety of it. So, as I answer this question, I will be contemplating love in its entirety, in all the dark, damp layers of it. I’m learning to love the routine of folding laundry slowly over the course of the weekend. I’m learning to love the feeling of grief when another tiny seedling dies for no apparent reason. I’m learning to love the click of cheap shades against the windowsill, as the spring wind laps at the side of our house. I’m learning to love the revision process for each blog post I write for all the small business owners looking for SEO bolstering. I’m learning to love the feeling of collapsing into bed after a day of frayed nerves and lingering hugs. I’m learning to love chopping vegetables for strange stews while my fiancé practices snare drum etudes in the studio. I’m learning to love growing herbs on the windowsill. I’m learning to love saying hi to people on their porches as I walk past. I’m learning to love being financially stable for the first time in my independent adult life. I’m learning to love my fiancé’s stubbornness in the face of change. I’m learning to love my self-judgement. I’m learning to love the possibility of rest and rejuvenation. I’m learning to love the rain again. I’m learning to love uncertainty, of not knowing, of not fully understanding. I’m learning to love those moments when I cannot hold myself up for crying so much. I’m learning to love my integrity. I’m learning to love saying no to things I cannot or do not want to take on. I’m learning to love the place where “humanness” and “nature” touch noses and swirl into one another.
these are all stories
These are all stories we tell ourselves. All of it. The heartbreak. The childhood. The identities. The things we’re good at, the things we lose, the places we find joy, all of it. All stories. Every last drop is a story we tell ourselves.
Except the body. The body speaks only in memory. In song. Except the body, which cannot lie. There are no tales to weave here. Only an unraveling of what is already whole and perfect and older than we can imagine. These are all stories we tell ourselves, except the body.
how tempting it is
How tempting it is to build a monument to our pain, a towering monolith of trauma, a permanent tattoo of our losses. “Look,” we call, “look at how you have ravaged my soul. Look at my body in tatters.” How we forget that we are already building the most powerful monument: the story of how we have gathered ourselves up again, yawning piece by yawning piece, warming our bodies around a new, infallible belief in ourselves, expanding as our disfigured mouths grow pink and taut with healing. “We are here,” we call, “we are here, whether you see us or not.”
starting the day with Rumi
I want to start the day off with Rumi. Everything else feels intrusive. Just the fact that I can write this sentence, sitting at the grooved wooden desk upstairs, reflecting on desire, is a miracle.
nothing is ours at all
there’s something in the way we
catch at words,
gently tucking them away
into the softest parts of ourselves.
it’s not The Truth
(that so quickly dissolves into
chaos, obeying entropy
over our ornery need for absolutes)
it’s not Comfort
(a myth that seems to
float
always just
out of reach)
it’s more the clinging, quiet
moment in which each of us discovers
how small we are
or, rather, it’s the thousands
of tiny, breathing moments in which
we remember, all of a sudden,
for a fleeting inhalation,
that nothing is ours at all
or, rather, the visceral
stirrings that belong only to us.
we have taken in more than we can bear.
we have held floods.
we have failed to protect ourselves.
we have asked for too much.
this is not a salve, but rather
a snag in the balance,
when the world can’t help
but stop and listen.
i am not special
i am not special
i race to nowhere
i am not special
i hang sunset flowers to dry
in the west-facing window
i am not special
i eat discount applesauce from the plastic bottle
i am not special
i am always looking for reasons to want
Siena Rose 