coordinates: at a desk overlooking the Pacific in Los Angeles
Today’s essay came from a late-night conversation with the wise voice in my head when I couldn’t sleep.
Aging is the process of breaking while you find wholeness.
Why do some get to be painters and poets and lovers and childbearers? Why do some get to live their dreams and some not?
Dream yourself onward to foreign shores which terrify you. All of our dreams take us into our terrors or out of others’ terrors for us.
Do not mistake the path of the poet as different than yours. You live your poetry as your expression of essence.
I fucking hate this. It’s the same bill of goods I’ve been believing that’s gotten me nowhere. I know nothing.
Good. Yes, you've realized you know nothing. This is the process of breaking while you remember your wholeness. This is the stitching and gluing back together of you.
Breaking. Wholeness. None of it makes sense. I hate all of it. I don’t know anything. What good can come out of knowing nothing?
You know more than you might think. Stay here. Go out on the patio and sing. Release some curses that have cursed you. Take a smoke break for a little while. See who joins you in those in-between moments.
My body is off balance. She’s shut for business when I finally need her. Have I been neglecting her so badly?
There are some repairs needed – some closer tending. This is part of aging. Break while you’re breaking. Rest. See. Seek. Find.
What do I do?
You must find your way out of all this stress, not keep adding more always.
Aging is the process of breaking and finding out you’re not broken. Aging worries the part of you which loves to worry. Aging loosens the screws of the familiar rust. Let again do its fine work. Let it wrinkle you deeper. It will anyhow.
Aging is the process of being broken open, of painting the walls with the goo of you to spell out a message which only you can say in that way – in that very curious way you have of saying things.
Aging is the process of catching the smell of what’s yours to smell and smelling it while that flower blooms.
I sometimes want out entirely. I don’t want to die, but I want to be off the planet. I wish I could pause for a moment but there’s never ever a moment where I’m not here watching everything. It’s a prison to be present so much.
Why is your presence not light?
Aging is the process of lightening your load knowing your heart is light as a feather. Give away all you can bear to.
Unburden yourself of things you no longer need, especially heartbreak. Let that go. Let’s go together now in love, not in the lovegrief.
The lovegrief is the most real thing I have. It’s the only thing that connects me to my tears and to my realness.
Then connect to tears of joy. Now you know how.
I’m scared.
Whose fears are these?
I saw a vision in my mind’s eye of me handing my mom this burden of fear. I saw her say “I’ll take that back, that’s mine.”
How long am I going to have to wait for my beloved? Should I even wait another second?
Aging is the process of breaking open,
breaking open,
breaking open,
while you are whole.