Prelude

Amuse bouche for what's to come

I used to think everyone had the same emotional responses to certain people, places, or art. I presumed that, if they didn’t outwardly react, neither should I. The unstated became deep-buried ache.

Stills from new favorite, Thursday.

Only we know what calls us. Our lives are made in the moments of deciding how to respond.

Per Annie Dillard: “We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience — even of silence — by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse.”

Like Dillard, perhaps you have experienced a similar wrenching of the soul. A portal revealing your true life beyond.

Once the portal opens, I must consider it. I stalk my calling through sustained observation; enough time to ensure it won’t flit away. I examine it and (try to) remove external thoughts.

I spend a while in the sacred pause between impulse and action. Questioning why I would leave something that’s brought me so far. For a door, however much it connotes expansion, does the same for loss. To enter a new place is to leave somewhere else.

The threshold demands privacy. A moment in which to look all directions at once. I hover and see a thousand lives descending like branches. Our past and future selves, many of which are gone. How beautiful to imagine we get even one.

You can find the video here.

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Recently, I…

Donated to a Minnesota Immigrants Rapid Response Fund (for added incentive, check out the latest by goth here); read a Palestinian account of our global moral failure; took a late-night sauna then gazed at the full moon. Life!