The Persistence of the Present

I woke up today with a few messages on my phone. One from one of my oldest and dearest friends, stating he was going to MOMA to see his favourite painting.

I reflected, as I am wont to whilst languidly taking in the sunshine-spackled view of my French garden through my bay windows; I remember that Dali was one of my all-time favourite artists, how Persistence of Memory was my the one painting that called out to me, watching the slideshow my art teacher was presenting when I was 11.

And yet, now I realize the difference in me. Whereas the old me, the one who is mostly all over this blog and my poetry blog, was so very much deeply entrenched in memory—the idea of living, reliving, not forgetting, cherishing, not relinquishing—the me today is so much more content to simply be here now.

In fact, I am so actively propelled into the moment I am living by my sheer joy in rediscovering what it means to do so. No more wallowing in old memories, no more wishing for times long gone. There is a very high-energy happiness that goes into rediscovering this very moment for exactly what it is. It is the spirit of simply being.

Be happy for this moment; this moment is your life.

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up the Heart

"So what are you thinking or feeling now?" she asked.

I sat there in the quiet boardroom, with my face in my hands. I could hear the muffled sounds of the rest of the office building going on with it's regular business things.

"I don't know," I said.

"I don't know?" she mimicked me gently.

I looked up and peeked at her, "I don't know. All I can think is the L word."

"Ooh boy," she shook her head.

"It scares me so much, how much this is affecting me. I don't know how to let go if that's what I have to do, because it is killing me right now even to consider not..." I flicked away a stray tear that found its way down my cheek.

"Do you think you should let go?" she asked.

I took a breath and considered how to phrase what I felt.

"It's like that Marie Kondo thing," I started.

"Huh? Marie Kondo?"

"You know how she has that system of purging things and keeping a minimalist, simple life..." I tried explaining. "Well it's like you consider what you have and how that thing makes you feel and if you can let it go."

She nodded at me.

"Well," I looked out the window lost in thought.

"Well that's the thing. It isn't what I may or may not have promised for tomorrow.

It's just that, when I think of him, when I am with him, when he's being whatever the hell he is even the most annoying version of himself, but when he is there with me....he sparks joy."

The autonomy of sufficiency

This evening I went out running as I have been doing each day this summer, alone on the trails in the middle of the ravine and surrounded by trees.

There, alone, I stood on an incline, watching the candy pink and orange sky dim as the sun ceded. The air was moist and heavy, and I stood there as the first drops started pattering down on my head, raising my arms over my head and tilted my face up to the gentle downpour.

I can never express in enough words how much these moments touch me. Giving me space to be at one with my thoughts - however torrentuous, tormented and melancholy they might be.

As I stood there for a moment, in a silent dance with the summer wind, suddenly I caught a whiff of a certain scent which I can only describe in how it made me feel: poignantly bereft.

It smelt almost artificial, cosmetic; as if it were a perfume belonging to someone. I opened my eyes and looked around: I was still very much alone. But as the overlaying boughs of the trees swayed in the wind awaiting the truly violent storm to break, I also spotted a park bench somehow deep within the trees. It sat there alone, almost unseen, strangely far off the path. And a whimsical thought occurred to me: perhaps there on the bench sat a ghost, waiting and waiting for the beloved who never arrived.

But even as this romantic thought crossed my mind. I took another step forward and suddenly the scent hit me again, and I closed my eyes as I had a very strong and vivid recollection. All of a sudden, in one fraction of a breath I was thrown back years to my childhood when I stood at the casket at the funeral home, wherein my mother lay.


To say that this scent is what has hinged me on to this memory is difficult to explain. There have been a myriad of odd moments when I will catch the slightest scent of this and something will trigger within me but I never know why...until I do.

And, I stood there in the rain, letting the skies cry down on me, reflecting: perhaps that's where memory lies; through my senses my five year old self relayed on a capsule to my older present self. Loss often comes at us from places we don't expect it, and at times we don't see it coming.

space

I wasn't supposed to expect anything.

And yet I fell into the rabbit's hole, and did.

I don't know how to express myself here anymore. I'd fallen into a weird conundrum of taking pen to paper and writing my thoughts and feelings in a notebook, ostensibly to that one person who gave me inspiration through letting me see my words through his eyes.

I'm at this weird rocky line now where I look at this book with so many feelings - part of me isn't able to touch it again, part of me wants to throw it hard across the room and perhaps light it on fire. Part of me just wants to throw it away or rip out the pages and toss them to the wind.

So here I am. I don't know why I asked for anything for myself again. I keep making this mistake and it ends up with me hating myself for ever opening up again. Letting someone in again. Letting them hurt me again. It's a cycle isn't it? And I keep thinking that the only way to break the cycle is simply to stop doing the same thing. Which is what I had tried doing for the last several years: just not letting anyone in.

I don't know why it happens; how I let anyone in through all the armour and walls I've built up. Even now, all I want is to have a long discussion with this one person who's made his way through and discuss this very strange thing. But I can't.

Once again I'm here alone. Sitting on the doorstep waiting to be let in again.

The thing is, and I have to keep reminding myself this... we weren't promised happiness or love when we came into this world - were we? It's not expected, it's not a given. And yet we keep somehow selfishly assuming we are owed this much. These things are illusions and fleeting at best. I wasn't promised happiness, I wasn't promised love. Move on. Live on.

Expectations of Empathy

This morning at work, I was returning from a meeting and passed a colleague. As she passed, I sensed it.

She was asking someone on my team a question when I sidled up to her and waited for her to finish her query. As she turned, I simply put my arms around her. 

"Hi Nadia," I said quietly, "I think you need a hug right now."

And she just started crying. There in my arms, she held on and sobbed. 

I think it's because I know what it's like to hold in so much pain, and contain all the grief in a very tight vessel that you think you've buried deep inside that I am able to sense it so acutely and tangibly in others.

I recall recently talking to someone very important to me and we were discussing our lives, and also that thing about being empaths. I recall pondering the idea that I sometimes tell myself that I am able to absorb all the pain that is out there in the world and perhaps help mitigate the anguish and despair that is out there, if perhaps somehow, even a little bit, it makes the world we live in a better place.

I don't know. Maybe it's a way of surviving for me. I've done my share of locking out people and pushing away those who care simply from a deeply entrenched emotional claustrophobia that maybe everything that comes my way is just a way of me getting my share.

Then again, just the way I spotted Nadia throughout the day chatting with colleagues, making jokes, cackling to her own surprise, I can smile to myself to know that perhaps just by my own small gestures I can provide comfort to others and help lighten the loads they are carrying just by acknowledging that I care.

There'll always be the people who will make sure you know that they care, not by assuming you know, but by their behaviour. It's also ok to let go of the naive idea that you can ever be so important to be someone's #1. Be your own #1. 

Canopy of Change

Sometimes I forget how easily the sight of a bird in flight, in flit, in air fills me with contentment. 

In the same way that soaring along a ravine path under the canopy of the newly-adorned trees fills me with a certain type of ecstasy: wind rushing through my hair, against my ears, into my face, with the sweet soundtrack of serendipity that is nature.

Or the whimsical pleasure of having random grandmothers - throughout the day, and quite independent of one another - strike up conversations:

"We ought to get a discount for this, don't you think?" says the white-haired little woman, as we disembarked off a bus that stopped 15 feet from the actual stop, making us walk further to the intersection.

"What soup is that?" enquired a smiley lola, "... oh, I've never had lentil and kale soup in my life!" 

"yes darlin', is the weather of romance I tell ya," winked a Jamaican momma, upon catching me smiling as I walked home, swinging my bag.

Maybe it's the season: Spring has always filled me with a burgeoning sense of joy. The beckoning of warmth, the tendrils of hope, the aroma of a beautiful tomorrow tantalizing our senses from around the corner. 

Maybe it's more. I've always pondered about my relationship with change. I've written about it often enough...and sometimes I wonder whether it's a love-hate relationship. The idea of new things, new ideas, new possibilities, new opportunities fills me with a sense of being. It's hard to describe. Sometimes I just put it down to my innate sense of curiosity and irreverent urge of pushing boundaries.

Maybe its - well, that's for another post. Before the next thunderstorm drops, I've to don my running shoes and hit the ground running for another dose of ecstasy.

The Chaos of Reckless Loneliness

Lately, she's stopped being alone. And yet, she finds herself lost in a starker, darker, loneliness than she's experienced in a long while.

How did she allow this door to open again? She's kept it shut, locked tight, waterproof—almost—for a very long time.. and somehow, without realizing, the door's eased its way open again.

She's put up too many guards over the years — successfully building out an empire of aloofness and detachment that's only served exceedingly well. And in the blink of an eye, somehow she's allowed it all to vanish, evaporate, in the blink of an eye.

And yet this loneliness seems the worst sort. It's addicting, calls her name in the middle of uneasy dreams, whispering into her ear whilst she's otherwise occupied. She's constantly seeking it out. It's a strange ache: she's catapulted head over heels into a black hole of chaos. She's not sure if its killing her or she's only revived.

And yet, despite it all, she's always been one to jump into the deep end, launch herself into the air without a parachute ... so maybe this time, despite the agony, despite the reckless hope — perhaps, she'll finally fly.

Crossroads

I woke up today with a dull, but intimately familiar, sense of melancholy. I am feeling the twinge, that effervescent strumming of heartstrings that resound in a song of hope yet with an underlying whisper of torment.

I find myself once again at a crossroads, or rather, in one of my favourite spaces: a state of liminality. I've broken free of the cage that has held me from fully stretching my wings to its utmost to truly soar. And still there is something that makes me hesitate; for I have flown beyond expectations and broken ceilings...nevertheless, I still find myself as guarded as ever with this strange feeling that's so familiar and yet so different in the best of ways.

I've wished that I had been able to return here - my comfort zone where I can pen my feelings and thoughts in the comfort of my words. But in the last several years, this too has been tainted with that disconcerting sense of peering eyes; watching and prying. It's a feeling that has prevented me from truly returning to writing the way I have before.

I wish, as always, that I had been able to record those moments that were less melancholic. I've put myself more into living in the moment - and in doing so, I've detached myself from dwelling. Dwelling in the form of sitting here and writing, dwelling in nostalgia, or perhaps running away from the possibility of hope. Perhaps I've been running from myself even whilst saying that I've focused on the now, at the cost of sacrificing the one vehicle that has always been my sanctuary. It's now the stirring in the air, coupled with this strange stirring that I find within that's yet again spurring me to write.

I recognize that I am now on a threshold. I'm trying to pace myself in enjoying things at a slower pace even while experience a crazy rush of strange emotions coming at me all at once. It's driving me crazy but I think it's safe to say that underneath it all I am enjoying every moment of it.