Happy 2nd Birthday to Now is Good!
I love any cause for celebration, but this one hits different. Now is Good is growing up, taking on a new life of its own at sunshineshop.la
Thank you so much for being along for the ride. Here’s to another year of Now is Good!
I fluctuate between having it all and having nothing at all.
Some days I’m just a beam of light, connecting two places. Just like loving someone, you stretch your beam of a trillion buzzing atoms across an expanse. We point our beams towards the heart of another, in search of something that will send back their ray in the same proportion.
When you feel the glow of someone’s beam for so long, you become accustomed to that warmth. Heartbreak from subtle forms of absence can feel just as jarring as a messy split. The temperature shift occurs either way. We are left to reposition our beam, rather than target a void.
Letting the darkness resonate can be necessary. To experience the resounding nothingness and find a sliver of spirit floating within it. Perhaps a realization, that this sliver is better than anything the exterior could throw. A pivot inward, the beam illuminates our first and last companion: the body and the soul it houses. The warmth of self-directed love permeates the dampest corners.
Beam pools into beam, a current alive. Charging up everything it meets. Curveballs come in, the autocorrect could substitute the second e for an a, serving an entirely different experience. But everything is intentional. Even Chaos activates to shake things up. Chaos can smell stale like a bloodhound. It targets the stuck situations, feeding on calcified notions. Even with the best aim, a force of nature can miss the mark. Then it’s just an inconvenience added to the week.
Lately I’ve heard the roaring of old Prius’ with missing catalytic converters roving through my neighborhood. You’ve probably heard them too, a rumbling grumpy ghost, missing a loved one’s touch. Chaos has fallen upon my catalytic converter too many times to count. I take it to the shop and the mechanic tries to sell me on a giant shell that protects the precious pearl of plutonium locked within the catalytic treasure.
Every time I refuse the cage, because I’d have to pay even more out of pocket. I’ll take my chances with my friend Chaos. Now I hear the growl of a stranger’s Prius and feel one with the person behind the steering wheel. My beam is their beam, even if they don’t know it. We are wound together by sound and light.
It’s all gradual. I turn dust into mud, mud into clay and build clay into a figure I can share. If I could look into a mirror and see myself 10 years younger, I’d tell her to stop waiting for the things you don’t want. I’d tell her to start gathering dust because it takes time to get clay. It takes even longer to learn to share it. I’m still learning that one.
I’m an eternal student. I’m taking a course on empathy and non attachment. They say the golden rule is don’t take things personally. If you’re going to give, be prepared to walk away without hearing back. We’re all out here, doing what we can. If I direct my beam of countless buzzing molecules across the airwaves, who knows what’s behind door number three?
Can you wait to find out? How long?
Can you ever truly see me? Or am I just a collection of beams? I’ve always been more comfortable with the beam collection scenario. No two people see the same person the same way. They see a collection of my beams and their own beams, pointed back at them. I am trying everyday, to understand this when I look at others. I am trying everyday, to forget your collection from yesterday, so I can look with fresh eyes. So I can laugh at how silly this all is, that I would ever see a blade when it’s just a polished spoon.
The body wants a walk every day. It wants the crisp air when the sky is still a pale blue. It wants to grow old but not too fast. This morning we traveled along the river, forgetting the bridges we normally cross and landing in a thicket that claimed to be a creek. Orange picnic benches littered a clearing in the bushes, gnats hovered above the damp earth that once held water. Maybe it was flowing during the rains. Now the scrub brush shakes with lizards, slow and unaccustomed to visitors. My dog almost caught one, but I intervened.
I think of nature as too fast for me, in the slowest way possible. It’s moving in centuries, I’m moving in decades. One day my bones will be brittle and there will be tiny green leaves on the lemon trees. One day my skin will be crinkled and the sky will be the same endless blue. One day I’ll be dead and the ground will be soft.
Someone else will be there to gather the dust. Their creaseless hands will shape the mud into clay. They will stare at the earth and wonder what life has in store, not realizing it’s spilling forth all the time.
That’s all for today.
xx
James
Congratulations on your second anniversary.
This came through when I didn’t even realize I needed it. Thank you James 🤍