life(y)
Begin at the beginning, and so I do, or at least I try, except my beginning feels already in progress, in some middle, with eyes glued to some future, some goal, some task completed. I sigh, breathe another breath (its own beginning), try again. Right here, this step, not thirty steps in. There’s a view right here.
On a beautiful evening, I sit with five women as the sun goes down. We sip wine, we eat, we talk. There’s a book that’s brought us together but most of the conversation flows around ourselves and our families, a smattering of dreams-for-someday and questions-for-now, much laughter. After a few days of being in a funk, it is just the medicine I need. One of the women says that lately life has been, well, lifey and I wholeheartedly agree, gather the word into my lexicon to pluck for future use. Lifey, full of complexities and muchness, tenderness and truth. Lifey, with an underpinning of beauty.
Walks get earlier as the days get hotter as we move toward summer solstice. The energy lifts and fills and I give in to the brightness, the heat, the trickles of sweat down the spiny middle of my back. In truth, my heart looks to the future winter months, to the dark and quiet, to the sweaters and crackling fire, but I remind myself: this step, not thirty steps in; this light, this heat, this day, look at the view right here.
The roses are blooming, the lavender too, the eucalyptus sending new shoots among last year’s still-uncut, now-dead coppery growth. The contrast strikes me, the fresh chalky green sprouting from the same spot as the old coppery brown. I wonder if this contrast is what keeps me from taking the pruning shears out to the garden, this contrast a reminder of new and old, of tending and shifting, this contrast a reminder of how it is to live, of how it is to be lifey.
I don’t plant cosmos or zinnia seeds this spring, and now wait for signs that last summer’s blooms reseeded, fingers crossed, heart hoping. Time will tell, thirty or so steps from now, in late July or August. I have let the garden go and yet it unfolds. I feel its unfolding deep in my bones, tie my gaze to the unfurling leaves and peachy pink petals, to the underpinning of beauty and truth… in the garden, in me. I tie my gaze to the view right here, aware of horizons and shifting seasons but staying here, not thirty steps in. Just this, just now, where everything is lifey.
I have only one thing to do and that’s be the wave that I am, and then sink back into the ocean.
- Fiona Apple -