snow. freshly brewed coffee with almond milk. a lit candle. knee socks (polka-dotted). windows ever-so-slightly-open. just enough time to give the apartment a really good clean. and some damn fine music.
perfection in the small pocket of respite that this morning affords.
you want to know what i hate? big-sloppy-mouthed-cheek kisses that leave the recipient wiping the side of their face. falling asleep with one boot still on because the zipper got stuck and at one in the morning there isn't the energy or will to get it undone. dreaming about said boot all night. not having enough time. feeling snowed in (metaphorically, not literally--literally, i could do with a little more snow).
i might come back into my skin sometime around the beginning of march (might).
so for today, because i myself need some words of inspiration, do please indulge me as i share just that:
i ran down the hill toward home.
home for now.
the air was cool, bordering on blistery, but certainly not becoming of february.
my feet throbbed and i wondered why i had chosen to wear my blue-suede-pumps to work--where was the sense in that?
it was close to two, middle of the night, exhaustion creeping in that uncomfortable way around the back of the head.
this is your becoming, this is your becoming, i repeated, calling forth the wisdom of my elders and betters.
i could make a list of everything that's upsetting me. and in three months time most of the issues will have passed or receded or proved blessings. i know this. there is comfort in this.
and yet, three years ago i might have said the same, but there are still those few, same uncomfortable, unanswered questions. the same unanswered love, the same unfulfilled home in this city.
this is your becoming.
it can change in a new york minute. that's what they say. but it's been eight years now and any good changes have been a fight. slow and painstaking and absolutely measured in inches--won in inches and years. nothing resembling a minute.
this is your becoming.
you see, most days i feel like i'm banging my head against the same damn walls and lord i need a good cry, but hell if it'll come.
this is your becoming.
just one good thing, i think. one good, unexpected little miracle. let it surprise me.
that's all i want.
i sit with that wish. for a good long while i let it take up just enough space, careful it doesn't consume.
and then, just the other day, while listening to the avett brothers and paging through a script on the long, unforgiving train to the outer-fringes of brooklyn, there is a thought:
you are the miracle.
this is my becoming.
i am the miracle. my very existence. the breath that rises and falls. the little rebel heart that continues to pump blood, continues to fall in love even when i can't see the sense, or summon the strength. the will to be better, to be more, to see wider and love more freely, i. am. the miracle.
the rest will come. because i exist and i want and i'm willing to fight--even in inches. each day is more, even when it feels little and ugly--the day is more. the inches will add up, the inches will accumulate.
this is my becoming.
i am the miracle.
i once heard that an empty stage--or perhaps, it was a silent stage--is death to an actor.
the expression never sat well with me. i always thought it missed the mark.
supposedly sound never dies. a sound once made lives forever. its amplitude or frequency (or some such something that people much smarter than myself understand) changes. and because the amplitude or frequency (or sum-such) changes we cease to hear the sound.
but that doesn't mean it isn't there. charging the space. a currency of air.
it always seemed to me that an empty stage and the shadow of sound was fertile ground for an actor. that sitting on stage, quiet and alone, actively inviting the silence...that there was a magic in the theatre of that. no performance ever ends. the ghosts live on to inform the present. all art is done in the wake of that which has come before. all art is in honor of the past and pathway for the next.
in the first grade i sat in the school auditorium, new clipboard and pale-purple notepad before me. i sat and listened as the second-grade teacher, ms. jackson, gave a small after-school workshop on writing. for a writer a blank page is death, she said. well, maybe not those words exactly. but something close. she said the all the empty space of a blank page is an invitation for mess. for words and scribble and whatever else the hand may create before thought dictates sense.
certainly the sound of those words live on. if only for me, in the deep marrow of the me attempting to forage some sort of life in the wilderness of youth and fear and endless possibility.
there's this thing going round the internet these days. about a teacher attempting to illuminate the lasting affects of bullying for her young students. the story goes she had them each take a blank page of paper, crumple it up, stomp on it, crunch it, get angry with it, and then smooth it out. the idea being you can smooth it out till your blue in the face--you can apologize till the world ceases to spin, and yet, the crinkles remain.
a powerful lesson, no doubt.
undoubtedly important for children to learn.
and yet.
i am a crinkled piece of paper.
i am deeply flawed and dirty and i have been trampled upon more times than i should ever hope to count. by myself. by others with my consent. by the very act of engaging in life.
my white-blank-page is now crumpled and dirty and torn, discolored in places and marked up in others. and i wouldn't have it any other way. my mistakes, my failures, as well as my successes have transformed the original sheet.
