I am reading a memoir right now with that all-too-familiar blurb on the front: “Fearless” the blurber cries. I didn’t notice this until after I had taken the book home, begun it, and learned a little bit about what was inside. And I can tell you that if the book was truly fearless, I would have zero interest in it.
Today I want to talk about those people who seem to do whatever they want. You probably have one or two of them kicking around your life. And I’m not referring to trust fund kids, retirees with a variety of fulfilling hobbies, or babies. (Babies obviously always do what they want—in their pants or in the grocery store, restaurant, etc.)
“So, The Smurf starts with a bounce,” Heather says, dropping into her knees. A loose, mini-squat kind of motion. “It’s really just a bounce.”
It feels like a play today. Whistle, or like a shard of the future has lodged itself in my shoulder.
~ Lisa Olstein, To the Left of Boom
Things are shaking again. Moving. Maybe it’s the season? Are you feeling like this? Like ripping it up—tearing through patterns, and behaviors, and expectations, and comfortable illusions, and the soft, gummy gauze of memory?
You can tell a lot about a person by the way they open a door. I was contemplating this the other day in the women’s restroom as I stole a short, desperate break from work. (Real estate offices are total mayhem in the spring.)
The topic of permission came to me recently courtesy of my ex-husband, who has a genius for texting me what has been on my mind before my mind can process it. We all have our gifts. One of his, it seems, is of mental midwife.
The bubble has burst, as I knew it would. Said it would, actually, eight days after arriving. “I feel so wonderful,” I texted a dear friend. “I’m a little worried this bubble can’t hold.” Dear Friend responded with assorted breeds of happy-face emojis and applauding hands. Assured me that the bubble didn’t need to burst at all. Life could simply be like this from here on out. That the winds of forever-ever-after-loveliness would only e’er more gloss my cheeks and kiss the backs of my receptive hands.
A friend once told me she envied my ability to dream, and to remember these stories after waking. At the time I didn’t think this was much of a gift. I was dreaming in fearful fragments—odd parabolic universes that threatened to undo me during what should have been my respite from an equally upsetting life.
I can feel the strings between us tugging—stretching—unraveling. This awful and endless taffy pull I chose isn’t sweet most of the time. It sticks like a bone in my throat.
As the Buddhists say, each moment is a birth, a life, and a decay into the next. (If the Buddhists don’t actually say something along these lines, they should… because that is how it freaking is.)