I have this “image” in my mind. Except it’s not an image—I think it’s a sensual memory. Indistinct. Life of some sort in the palm of my hand. I curl my fingers inward to hold it, but carefully. This thing is delicate. Easily disfigured.
Easily killed.
A heartbeat flutters sketching a ghostly sonogram on my skin. It’s a game of peek-a-boo and “careful-careful” and I feel like a toddler not knowing how to control my body with tenderness. I feel like a toddler confronting the wonder of it all.
But these moments pass so quickly. Something shiny just out of reach catches my eye. And “living in the moment” too often means a singular attention focused on this immediate thing. Too often the drama.
And it means something irreparably damaged. Lost before I knew what it was.
There are so many variables that it is difficult to pinpoint what has triggered a change. Sleep. Medication. Aging, and all the inevitable events that follow: deaths of all kinds. Maybe the burnout was finally so complete that I can rise again like a phoenix. An awkward baby bird.
I’ve enjoyed the quiet. This quiet. It is someone worth holding on to.
to live a beautiful life, what does that mean? is it necessarily pleasant from the inside going out? still, what a sight to see. you said yourself, “confronting the wonder of it all”.
to me, to me, that has meaning in its bones.
I try, I’m learning I hope, to sing that back to you. two whale songs in the far far sea?
been a stack of months, my legs dangling over a precipice. I think my wisdoms not all so wise as I thought. not bad, but life has something more real, more dear. I’ll settle for being a decent man.
Maybe living a beautiful life means noticing these beautiful moments of listening to whale songs from far away? Your wisdoms dear and as close to real as words can come.
Holding Life Loosely
I have this “image” in my mind. Except it’s not an image—I think it’s a sensual memory. Indistinct. Life of some sort in the palm of my hand. I curl my fingers inward to hold it, but carefully. This thing is delicate. Easily disfigured.
We all here have missed your ‘thoughts’. The above excerpt…. is why. My brilliant American friend who lives so far away!
I can’t say how much it means to return to this space and have you here still! Thank you for this!
Late to this, as always. Your voice is so ethereal. That’s why I’ve missed it. That’s why you’ve always been my mentor (although you describe me as one). Your voice is that soft touch on the harshnesses of life, like a petal touching skin is the only way I can think of to describe it.