The Afterglow of Wonder
I just spent two weeks on a road trip that felt charmed, full of serendipitous encounters, human connection, discoveries of histories and new vocabularies and self-revelations.
The come down from travel is always swift, like losing your breath, the wind suddenly knocked out of you. I find myself standing still again, alone in my childhood bedroom, the wind tossing the back-lit leaves outside my window, black imprints against a glowing gold-grey sky. The music is off. The aftermath of my travels strewn across my bed waiting to be put back into place. The companionship of a friend on the road, the wildness, the adventure, the sense of anticipation and the magic that seemed to touch every thing is dissipating.
It is days like this I want to love with my whole being, to be alive in the fading afterglow of wonder, to not seek the voices crossing the invisible web to shatter my solitude, but to press into this-- to press into me-- myself caught up to me and falling about my shoulders, surrounding me-- with the same mixture of light & dark that is always leftover when the noises fade and I lie awake with my own company. I want to feel whole within all this love that already exists, not grasping, or striving, or wrestling for affection or affirmation or beauty or more.
For the past two weeks I have been thinking about a sixty-year old woman looked back and said, "I spent decades of my life feeling shame." I reject that story line. My body is shameless. My wanting is shameless. My need is shameless. My fears are shameless. My culture has built such a strong narrative around rejection (or confidence, or success? I'm not sure the root)... that it feels gutting to admit that you need/want anything you are not getting.
The come down from travel is always swift, like losing your breath, the wind suddenly knocked out of you. I find myself standing still again, alone in my childhood bedroom, the wind tossing the back-lit leaves outside my window, black imprints against a glowing gold-grey sky. The music is off. The aftermath of my travels strewn across my bed waiting to be put back into place. The companionship of a friend on the road, the wildness, the adventure, the sense of anticipation and the magic that seemed to touch every thing is dissipating.
It is days like this I want to love with my whole being, to be alive in the fading afterglow of wonder, to not seek the voices crossing the invisible web to shatter my solitude, but to press into this-- to press into me-- myself caught up to me and falling about my shoulders, surrounding me-- with the same mixture of light & dark that is always leftover when the noises fade and I lie awake with my own company. I want to feel whole within all this love that already exists, not grasping, or striving, or wrestling for affection or affirmation or beauty or more.
For the past two weeks I have been thinking about a sixty-year old woman looked back and said, "I spent decades of my life feeling shame." I reject that story line. My body is shameless. My wanting is shameless. My need is shameless. My fears are shameless. My culture has built such a strong narrative around rejection (or confidence, or success? I'm not sure the root)... that it feels gutting to admit that you need/want anything you are not getting.
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