It's that peculiar trick of light that's always there at this time of year. There's a warm glow around the days, marked by the sun, where signs of spring are already swimming just below our waists, we move through a haunted water that isn't yet wet. None of this would be unbearable if the other things didn't play out the way they always do, and this is what happens.
I go by that cafe where I was getting used to meeting her, the one where we could talk safely about everything that happened before and everything that will happen later, without having to worry about sleeping together. It's a little too public, but private enough that she can bring out all the objects she likes to play with and we can put on leather masks and watch the servers start to get nervous. In this cafe, no one knows who we are, even though we come here every day, because it's one of the few places where everyone recognizes that no one wants to be recognized, and no one really wants to be alone. I go by here. And I told myself that I hoped it was closed for the holidays, because I didn't really want to see her today, but when I see that it really is closed, my heart drops a little. I guess I was lying to myself a little.
The windows are not clean, but I can see through them to the tables, and there is a chalkboard behind the register that says, "Happy New Year." It looks very dark and grey in there, and it makes the rest of the day look a little grey, even though I know that the sky is a prettier color than it has been in awhile, and everyone is talking about weather. I suppose I like to think of it as a place that's never closed to me, but today it really is.
There are things about the sadness that I was feeling a month or two ago that have turned into other things, and some of them have stayed exactly the same. This is the "how things are" that everyone who is healthy learns to live with, and I am uneasy, but not as unhealthy as I have been before. I would like to say that I understand there is no river twice, and I do understand that this is the time of year when I look for the repetitions in everything. It happens a lot around times whenever there are big shifts, and there's one shift that is an 8 and another shift that is a 4, and there are more numbers involved that make this all very complicated. And I like to try to freeze time whenever there's something coming, because I want to try to remember exactly what I was doing before everything changed.
There are big bags of fruit on my floor, and they're waiting to feed the African goddesses and gods that were born in me, and there are beads on strings that mark another opening, and soon enough I will be talking to them all with coconuts, and soon enough I will be driving across the desert to where people lose everything so someone else can get born. I am starting to understand that birth is a metaphor, always a metaphor, and it always refers to something else, and everything else refers to this. This is how things work in the natural world, this is how things grow, and this is how things die. Sometimes it's nice to be connected to something much larger, and darker, and secret, and sometimes it is overwhelmingly sad, like the sadness that a mother feels for the children she loves too much.
This is how it is with us. We have a gift that is a large debt that we can never repay, and sometimes we get to find the sadness of that gift when we fall back into our bodies and fall in love with another one of the sea's children. This season holds magic and this season holds light, and the trick is to know that the sadness doesn't come from us, but it's something we inherit because we have the ocean running in our blood.
I go by that cafe where I was getting used to meeting her, the one where we could talk safely about everything that happened before and everything that will happen later, without having to worry about sleeping together. It's a little too public, but private enough that she can bring out all the objects she likes to play with and we can put on leather masks and watch the servers start to get nervous. In this cafe, no one knows who we are, even though we come here every day, because it's one of the few places where everyone recognizes that no one wants to be recognized, and no one really wants to be alone. I go by here. And I told myself that I hoped it was closed for the holidays, because I didn't really want to see her today, but when I see that it really is closed, my heart drops a little. I guess I was lying to myself a little.
The windows are not clean, but I can see through them to the tables, and there is a chalkboard behind the register that says, "Happy New Year." It looks very dark and grey in there, and it makes the rest of the day look a little grey, even though I know that the sky is a prettier color than it has been in awhile, and everyone is talking about weather. I suppose I like to think of it as a place that's never closed to me, but today it really is.
There are things about the sadness that I was feeling a month or two ago that have turned into other things, and some of them have stayed exactly the same. This is the "how things are" that everyone who is healthy learns to live with, and I am uneasy, but not as unhealthy as I have been before. I would like to say that I understand there is no river twice, and I do understand that this is the time of year when I look for the repetitions in everything. It happens a lot around times whenever there are big shifts, and there's one shift that is an 8 and another shift that is a 4, and there are more numbers involved that make this all very complicated. And I like to try to freeze time whenever there's something coming, because I want to try to remember exactly what I was doing before everything changed.
There are big bags of fruit on my floor, and they're waiting to feed the African goddesses and gods that were born in me, and there are beads on strings that mark another opening, and soon enough I will be talking to them all with coconuts, and soon enough I will be driving across the desert to where people lose everything so someone else can get born. I am starting to understand that birth is a metaphor, always a metaphor, and it always refers to something else, and everything else refers to this. This is how things work in the natural world, this is how things grow, and this is how things die. Sometimes it's nice to be connected to something much larger, and darker, and secret, and sometimes it is overwhelmingly sad, like the sadness that a mother feels for the children she loves too much.
This is how it is with us. We have a gift that is a large debt that we can never repay, and sometimes we get to find the sadness of that gift when we fall back into our bodies and fall in love with another one of the sea's children. This season holds magic and this season holds light, and the trick is to know that the sadness doesn't come from us, but it's something we inherit because we have the ocean running in our blood.
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