Leaves fall, Steam rises

“Let's take a break,” she says. I look up from my anatomy homework. “Let's go to the pound for a study break.” And that is how I met Atlas, quit school, my job, met my partner, bought a camper, quit society, and pivoted off the path so compacted with footfalls, it is an erosion nightmare mudslide in rainy season.

It's an airiness, but that you can see. It's silent movement and tangled hair. It's a fairy story, coming in bits and pieces, on the wind and underfoot, whole moss villages and a single intuitive decision.

Something about turning thirty has got me wanting a plan again, wanting stability and success. I joked that “yeah, turning thirty is great! You start seeing glitter falling from the sky, so beautiful!” But one day I was screwing a metal screw into a metal pole above my head and, through my sunshades and the frigid winter breeze, I see metal shavings start falling from the sky. And just like that, there was magic and glitter and manifestation.

It was a joke, but then it was reality, and not knowing is okay because seeing the beauty and seeking the pleasure of life will lead you to all that really cool stuff you've always wanted to be hip to.

I'm laughing and crying and angry, but it's simple and too much all at once. I'm sitting on the floor of my friend's living room, the carpet soft but well worn, lots of dander for sure. I am pulling from her Osho deck and reading the booklet because gah, that guy, amirite? “EXISTENCE NEEDS YOU,” and I could scream, you know?

Scream at the simplicity of it all, the complexity of the simplicity. I feel the vastness of my throat and the darkness of the chaotic outer space abyss reaching toward one another, one screaming and then the other, louder, they are swallowing each other like a telescoped intestine. Writhing and feeling mushy and sharp all at once. I am turning to dust, an earth worm, a speck of glitter. My eyes readjust and I am covered in cat hair.

“I am turning to dust, an earth worm, a speck of glitter.”

I get drunk and go out dancing by myself, the gay club is right across the street. I set up my tent in my friend's backyard because the cat hair got me wheezing, or maybe the chaotic outer space abyss scares me.

“...and that's the first time I called my dog my familiar. Like, Atlas is so much more than a rescue pup, man. I thought I knew, but I didn't, and its so much more.” I'm coming home to myself; I spent all this time trying to escape and that's okay because ancestral trauma is real and mysterious and it's here to teach me and, goddess, do I want to learn.

“Yeah, so, I'm taking this online class and it's about the sunsets and the mystery...it's complicated.” But it's not, because befriending mystery is vulnerable and to be vulnerable with a friend is to build intimacy, to trust and accept Not Knowing is floaty, weightless, nonjudgemental. It's where the growth and art and understanding is. It's the space where falling leaves and rising steam coexist.