Cassettes, river beds and star gazing
Spring cleaning in the twilight hours of august - no substance just sentiment
—Stargazing—
Precise & practiced, I no longer need to be awake to do this dance. Sedimented in dry grass withered from anxious sun all I can be is audience to the symphony. The subtle crescendo of thundering, chilled mist buzzes into my mind. Collapses are everything but boring. Whirlwind and catastrophic, twister touches sand and I’m scattered. 24 years of this and now there is thrill to it — terrifying. It’s more decisive than I can ever be. The momentum is now the most home I have felt in ages. I masquerade myself in it — loosing myself guises as clarity. Muscle memory kicks in and I nose dive — free falling like the world is finally catching up to me. In this liminal space I can loose myself to everything without consequence, an indulgence I fight against everyday.
But even I know it’s momentary. I have to land at some point. I’ve seen it countless times. Change’s glacial pace has deepened the grooves in my teeth and rooted tension that I can release only in my commitment to the uncertain shadows of tomorrow. So I’ll anchor myself this time until it passes. Usually loneliness wraps these moments, thick flesh cocoons. Isolated dive. Off the - high dive - 2 flips, I high my pull my knees to my chest, spinning. Morphing into an amorphous flesh colored blur — flying and captured in snap. A still brush stroke of naked tan against the blue background of the sky. My environment eating me alive. Dusk settles and I feel myself shift, fear lifts my toes but I keep my heels planted. The sky pierces light into the growing darkness that creeps down to the horizons.
Things never change and I’m still in here somewhere. I see them appear one by one. They help me practice patience. Reassuring me reminding me what I’m here for as the anxiety mounts. They move with the wind — marigold one second and translucent the next they seem mischievous and amused. Feathered mist blows away dusty lightness and cyan settles into the horizon. The pinnacles orbiting black- nothing. Sea fills my lungs. My hand trails dry grass as I run down the hill. I stop to pick blackberries. The sun sets leaving its dusty red entrails in the clouds. The sky resembles hellfire and the mountains stretch to cover the gore of the aftermath. Requiem concludes, a mouthful of stillness broken by relief of applause. It’s done and decided.
—Cassettes—
Routine from a different time guides me to my kitchen. I feel like I’m home late nights in my kitchen at college cooking for my friends or lovers but this time it’s just me. And I’ve never felt more myself. Before I would have felt so much yearning but I’m finally at home in my skin. Relief — certainty. And it’s not out there no matter how much I would want it to be no matter how much I love them.
I watch ghosts dance in the pot of boiling water and fleetwood decorates the time I take to be hypnotized by the bubbles flirting with the edges of the pot. There is heartbreak when you find yourself again, knowing that in a few moments you will be different, back to the present, having to let yourself go. Especially when you are the catalyst of a shift you are on the precipice of. A final routine to commemorate that things will never be the same after the decision to jump.
What do you do when you don’t feel like yourself?
I started this substack to both find voice within myself as I was practicing coming back from a dissociative state and to help old friends keep up with the events of my life I couldn’t seem to capture in any other form.
Its been a good practice of coming back into my body. Anxiety has been a companion to me, married and joined at the hip for 18 years; but I didn’t realize it had also brought along a friend until recently.
The extremes of such a reaction came to a head last October, hearing from my physician about a possible autoimmune condition and being involved with someone who had made everything so much worse. I was unpracticed in taking care of myself and jumped off of the deep end. For someone with big feelings, everything had started to roll off my back and disappear beneath the ether. Physicality was foreign and I felt like I was fumbling with controls when I moved through the world. Being so out of touch with my physical symptoms as someone with autoimmune issues was the nail in the coffin (ahah not yet). I hate to rehash the worst so I’m focusing on what indicators bought me back without realizing.
—Riverbeds—
Home is a great grounding practice. In the privacy of my friends bedroom that I grew up in. Littered with memorabilia of times we all went through, I’m reminded how much we all have changed. How grateful I am to have people in my life that have known me for a decade. The private moments of reconnection, of painful distance of the catastrophic change in all our lives in the beginning of the year. Grief and comfort of their arms and their words, things are different but I still love them the same. I contend with the grief that they might not know me as well anymore, but how many people get the opportunity to fall in love again with their first loves. I think of them more than they will know. I find myself more whole now that I can sit in my own shame of the worst.
THE PLAYLIST PEOPLE - vibes running away to middle of nowhere hometown like a coming of age teenager to finally find peace - very emo very no one gets me but vibes regardless :p Also checkout the new Maggie Rogers album it was basically my soundtrack during this time