I sit cross-legged under a tree with a cool ocean breeze hitting my face.

The blue canvas paper book sits as my desk where my laptop happens to join me on a fine Tuesday afternoon.

A plane engines over me and the wind kisses my ears.

There is a gnawing sensation of wanting to break free from my current life. The breaking free sensation is the root curiosity. Just having moved to a new town, my hometown I’d spent 10 years away from, it’s been a pretty graceful landing if I do say so myself. Now that my room has just about simmered into its rightful space, I am beginning to feel myself squirm with discomfort. The unknown and the mundane of the everyday, starting over, is a pinch sweet and a pinch sour.

The sweetness lies in the heat of the sun that my body soaks up every day. My bones are dry. The many people I see in the parks that I spend time in or the constant flow of feet and bodies bustling through supermarkets and stores excites me. Boardwalk for days, such a cool scene to a story, where artists and homeless and the richest Venice rockstars all saunter amongst each other. The agonizing pain and peace of that fills my imagination with the dance of the light and the dark, heaven and hell, all in one place.

Planet Earth!

The sweetness lies in discovering alleyways that are empty and small parks that are nestled in neighborhoods closest to the biggest nature battery on the westside. The divine sea. And though millions of people live in these well-nestled towns within the city, there are still times in the day when the beaches are sparse of people.

The sour lies in the old stories laid in the sidewalks of memory lane, where I see an opportunity to remeet my younger self who sometimes felt trapped, depressed, lost, and tuned out. The pain that is still embedded in my soma somehow gets tuned to its original song where it was born.

The sour lies in the ideas of a future that wasn’t here. Where the momentum has turned its wheels and now I arrive where I started. The sour feels thick, but the sweetness persists.

What I am getting to practice as I start noticing what emotions are coming up is learning to inquire on these feelings and allow them to express themselves. As if they had a voice of their own. Gentleness is coming up for me to practice. How open I am to receive a new way of seeing a situation is coming up for me to practice.

What stories am I telling myself around this feeling?

As subtle as it is, there is this line I am walking that is more refined and discerning. The older I get, regardless if the same feelings are coming up for me to feel and acknowledge, be it grief, fear, confusion, I start to realize that there is always space for a new communication to begin between me and my experience.

I am quicker to observe myself, slower to being hard on myself, and am more open to ground my mental space. Like a shift in perspective. There is something to becoming the observer and also inquiring on what we are experiencing in our body.

I use writing to alchemize a feeling that sucks. I like to put myself in situations where I give myself the opportunity to get creative. Sometimes cussing and processing out loud helps, too (a natural moment of levity and humor)!

Sometimes it’s talking to a dear friend who holds me as I express. Sometimes it’s gracing my venting to the ear of that ineffable something in the air, breathing life into existence. Sometimes it’s freestyling a sound into a song or moving my body to a primal beat. Sometimes it’s finding a crevice of nature and writing my feelings onto the page. And when I sense a shift in awareness and perspective, most of the time, even if it is a small one, I’ll take it.

Day by day. The thoughts of our mortality and the art of presence bring me to feeling more at home in this moment. Gratitude.

Gratitude for clean water to drink that sits with me. For the peace of writing poetry at parks that abundantly offer grounds to express. For the opportunity to be outside, breathing, listening to crows caw, making art, and being with the earth. For having moments with humans where a hello is passed each other’s way or a small conversation and nothing but that moment of connection seems to matter. Fleeting, yet adding a sound to the choir of our day.

The journey of life is made up by our day to day. I am curious about how I can allow myself the space to unfurl like a fern when it’s time. Curious to listen to my body and begin to inquire on how my body holds the emotions that I feel. Curious to continue the graceful movement of prayer and slowly implement mindfulness into my everyday where there is no rush to the next minute. Curious to allow myself to express myself and to feel whatever needs to be felt when it arises, without judgment.

I invite you to become curious about your wild webbed mind of ebbs and flows, moods, and feelings. Invite them into your alchemical kiln. Where anger and loss make friends with poetry and tears. Where we prepare to water what surfaces up for us to tend.

More gentleness. More inquiry. More curiosity. More nature.

An eternal discovering.

blush

where are the kindred souls?

soft at heart and strong in spine.

where a friendly walks the streets at night.

no fear, no crime, just a connection in time.

unwind and find the penny that drops in the center of your hand,

whirling into a traveling spiral.

a poet still sits in a park alone with breath and pen.

blasting through a portal where words transpire

onto canvas made by trees,

a slight breeze catches wind of my minds cave ways to a softer gaze on Grace’s infinite eyes:

she stares at me.

containing me.

~