Memories. Magic. Maddness

#1000words of coming home

I danced. Ecstatically. Wild hair, flung limbs. Pulsing with the beat. And in the campfire swirl in Kripalu’s Great Hall, I felt what needed to be felt, let go, soaked in, without judgement. In peace. In unity. In joy that was bigger than the whole sky. Bodies of cells moving in independence and community, vibrating where creation lives, living cells twinkling and alive, a breathing metaphor for Existence.

That was Day One of a prana mandala yoga retreat. Today is Day Two. Today is also another Day One—the beginning of my 6th year writing #1000wordsofsummer. And also, today is Day Two for something else.

Taylor owns her music. All of it.

I felt the weight of that knowledge during my dance, the weightless joy of reunification. With words. With dreams. With girlhood bloomed into womanhood. It isn’t only joy for her, for all of us that love her and the ways she makes us feel ok about being alive, but for the beautiful idea of being made whole.

I thought of her the entire drive to Kripalu. This idea of sticking with the process, without any promise of outcome, without knowing the end, the destination unknown. Finding comfort in the discomfort. Like getting a tattoo. Hours under a needle, skin turning raw as it becomes a work of art. I thought of her strength, her persistence, her resilience, her uncompromising loyalty to herself and her creations. If I possess only a sliver of those gifts, I’m going to be ok.

When I was young, I wanted to be a songwriter. I scribbled rhymes into padded journals that filled a box in my closet. I was rotten at guitar and a mediocre singer, but I knew in the deepest swells of my heart I wanted to tell stories with poetry.

It’s been almost 6 years since Taylor’s first 6 albums were sold out from under her. This is my 6th #1000wordsofsummer. Six has always been my favorite, luckiest of numbers. I am always on the lookout for synergy. Today Shiva talked about 6 planets in alignment, about moving swiftly, about slithering in and out of the room as our body calls. This all feels so special, if only to me.

Most of my life the Who I Am has been at war with the Who I Was. I’ve been telling the same story over and over again—not trying to get it right—more I’ve been trying to tell it as I truly felt it, to finally reveal to myself, like peeling a pomegranate, the many truths just as they are. I want to watch the seeds spill and glisten in sunlight, each juicer than the next. Each a story of who I’ve been, who I am, who I am becoming. You, too, are a precious fruit, powerful enough to influence the laws of the underworld.

Last night, the welcome at the door said, “Come as you are.” It was the theme of the night, a tone for the retreat. “You are already whole,” said Shiva. And I felt that. I think we all did.

Sometimes it’s impossible to see the wholeness, and instead we focus only on the holes. Mind the gap! But in truth, whether we see it or not, whether we succumb to a trick of the world’s light or see what lives beyond the mirror’s refracted reflection, we are whole. We are whole. We are whole.

These are my first 1,000 words of this summer, and I am dedicating them to the creator within my soul. (To the one in yours, too.) The little girl who had Taylor Swift dreams in the steamy afternoon quiet of her childhood home, painting pictures in her mind that were bedazzled in sequins and cowboy boots. Who dreamed of ripping open the sky with her words. I am honoring the drama mama born in high school, the hours of reading plays and scoring scripts, writing my own manuscripts so that I might visit the shores of characters born of my heart. I am honoring the woman who sacrificed great, delicate peels of her spirit in order to please, to meet deadlines, to help realize someone else’s prerogative and will—you did well, darling, no matter what anyone else might say. I am honoring the return to creativity, writing a short story about a woman with a mockingbird tattoo, a play about lovers pieced together, one memory at a time as I rode the subway, painting roosters by the light of the TV. I am honoring my paper flowers, the blooms that sprouted years ago in a flimsy attempt to realize what I saw in my mind—(My mind is alive!)—and then one day I ordered a $100 of Italian crepe paper and I learned to stretch and fold the petals and my creations bloomed, turning my space—so much like my childhood bedroom—into a garden where I felt, fully, as though I’d returned to where I have always been. At home. In myself.

I am honoring coming home to myself, a place I never left but feel as though I have been wandering away from, wilderness lost, for some 40+ years. But here I am. In ruby slippers. It was always here, always will be. And you are here with me.

The memories. The magic. The madness.—said Taylor in her letter to us. And I’m honoring that too. Memories. Magic. Madness. If Taylor tattoos a shamrock to her forehead I just may tattoos this incantation across my heart. Memories. Magic. Madness.

I think so often of how short our time here is, how precious. I must do what I must to be in this world and I must, simultaneously, live, to the best of my human abilities, in ways that connect me to the divine. We feel so separate but we are not. We are connected. A whole of individual wholes. We are one, together and forever and always.

The future is bright, dazzling.

This is exactly 997 words…

I love you.