Watching the sunrise(!)
New candle burning. Toes warm under the covers. Like I said yesterday, that thing about autumn.
Listening to Natalia Lafourcade describe her music in Spanish. Thinking of how similar she sounds to my favorite, Julieta Venegas. How similarity of another never actually becomes the thing itself.
Feeling like I’m floating above something with too much distance.
Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love.
— Eleanor Catton
It was a spectacular weekend. Sunlight, the perfect kind of weather, long walks in the park, so much deliciousness, and finally, the serene sleep that has evaded me for weeks.
***
We were discussing manicures for some reason, and why I don’t get them done. I asked her why she thinks my nails break easily. She reached over and hovered her hand close to my heart. “It indicates what’s going on inside of you,” she said. “The breaking, the cracking. There’s something you haven’t taken care of, you know, internally.”
Similarly — the startling experience of the splitting and sudden chill of the first nights of autumn. A moonlight that was so clear and tangible I could have plucked it from the sky. Feasting on fiery sunsets (usually reserved for Texas skies) during my runs.
I slept for 8 hours every night, my too-stubborn heart finally losing the battle with exhaustion. I spent a lot of time with Maggie Nelson and other types of blue (much more about this later).
I try to stay true to my love for autumn. People tell me how wonderful it is, how happy they are that autumn has arrived. The truth is, I adore everything about autumn. The warm days and chilly nights, the upstate apple-picking, the urgency of wearing all your skirts before you put them away, the beginning of scarf weather, the mooncakes, the vegetables that come in season, the appropriate kinds of mornings that make you crave tea & evenings that make you crave live jazz while in someone’s embrace.
But often all I can think of is how winter inevitably follows it. My attitude towards this probably says quite a bit about the things I need to work on.
On the subway ride home, I stumbled across a familiar quote in the book I am reading. The quote is from a poem by Antonio Machado, one of the great Spanish poets of the Generación del ’98.
Traveler, there is no path.
The path is made by walking.Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
I had just finished my workout, during which I had muttered under my breath with exasperation, “Yeah, remember? I can’t do single-leg deadlifts with my left leg,” and he looked at me sternly.
“Of course you can. I’ve seen you do it. Maybe your left leg doesn’t do them as well as your right leg yet. Maybe it doesn’t look how you want it to look. Maybe it needs more help and support from time to time. Maybe it feels shitty. But I don’t want to hear you say you can’t do it. Every day, just by doing, you’re getting better. You’re learning, you’re practicing. Walk the path.”
I got home and stumbled upon Maria Popova’s reminder about Shel Silverstein’s The Missing Piece, “a minimalist, maximally wonderful allegory at the heart of which is the emboldening message that true love doesn’t complete us, even though at first it might appear to do that, but lets us grow and helps us become more fully ourselves.”
I thought about being able to walk on my own, roll out my edges on my own. Taking shape before ambling down the path of life side by side with someone else.
Though he never answers it, Machado writes:
Between living and dreaming there is a third thing. Guess it.
Images from Shel Silverstein’s book, borrowed from Brain Pickings.
postscript:
from Times Alone: Selected Poems
Cielo y tierra pasarán.
Cuando cielo y tierra pasen
mi palabra quedará.
¿Cuál fue, tu palabra?
¿Amor? ¿Perdón? ¿Caridad?
Todas tus palabras fueron
una palabra: Velad.
Heaven and earth will pass away.
When heaven and earth have passed away,
my word will still remain.
What was your word?
Love? Forgiveness? Affection?
All your words were
one word: Awaken.
post postscript:
For fun,
The absence of vices adds so little to the sum of one’s virtues.
— Antonio Machado
