Last night I pulled up outside my home at half past midnight, after almost two weeks of being gone. The house felt surprised to see me, as if it had prepared to carry on without a resident. Joey jumped onto the bed (rare) and fell asleep while I washed my face and scrubbed my teeth with hydrogen peroxide. Chris is still in Albuquerque and the place was so quiet I ended up putting on a podcast, feeling more at ease with tinnie voices dancing out of my phone’s little speaker. It was slightly out of body, being alone in my own home after experiencing the rhythms of another family’s life.
As I sat on the foot of the bed to put on cozy socks, one of my longtime plants caught the corner of my eye. It really hit me that the bedroom was this plant’s home because I brought it here, I placed it on the shelf. So it must really be my home too. How strange, I thought, to have a place to put a plant that happens to be where I call home.
I didn’t have my own bedroom until I moved out of my parents place at 21. Personal space was an unknown concept and having it can sometimes be disorienting. Carving out a world for myself never felt entirely important, only now am I finding how sacred that can be.
This is not information I usually volunteer, I waited a year to tell my high school boyfriend that I shared a bedroom with my parents. He was never allowed into our home, so he would drop me off at the bottom of the complex’s stairs. Saying goodbye in such close proximity to our front door felt daring, even romantic, as I imagined our voices could echo through the stuccoed halls and across my apartment’s threshold, seating themselves in the carpet’s worn out patches.
Even if inviting him in was an option, I probably would have made up some excuse. I preferred to exist in other people’s spaces, observing their expressions of personality, looking for clues in the details of decoration. I was invested in the people who covered their walls in polaroids, hanging little trinkets from thumbtacks alongside collections of movie tickets. We enjoy curation, even if it feels gradual and unconscious.
Around the age of twelve I found an abandoned box of old new yorker magazines outside a small bookstore. Unfamiliar with the publication, I wondered if anyone knew these whimsical illustrations. Knowing that I should have something to display my personality, I pulled off a handful of covers and taped them onto the wall above my bed, next to the only other decoration: a handwritten copy of Psalm 23.
Now the psalm sits in the back of my memory, dusty and forgotten by the years. Reading the words immediately transports me to my old twin bed, where I’d recite the passage over and over to fall asleep.
Each time I reached my cup runneth over it felt like cresting a wave. An image of always having enough, more than enough, enough to share and keep on sharing. Before hot ticket words like abundance and manifestation came into popularity, my cup runneth over was there, saying it like no other.
I probably repeated this psalm hundreds of times over the years, now it seems this long lost proclamation instigated the blind faith that I’ve always operated with.
It all started in many ways with my first car, Zelda.
As soon as I could successfully leave the driveway I became ultra-mobile, crossing town for little garage shows, taking and teaching yoga classes, zipping off to parties at colleges I wasn’t attending after a late night restaurant shift.
Sometimes there would be a spark of magic or a deep feeling of awe during a yoga class or a night on the town. Whatever the environment, I was always searching for transcendence or inspiration that might draw me like a magnet to the next step. While I sound lost, I didn’t feel that way. A dream rested within, one that life could be creatively driven and fulfilling. Vague, I know, but I’ve learned that specificity can be the death of flow.
There was always a project in the works, one that asked me to stay and be alone with my thoughts.
Years went by where I was imagining myself as a creative but not really taking action to bring that to fruition. Working long hours in demanding jobs brought about some fodder for artistic expression but mostly heart ache and frustration.
Even then, I look back at my notebooks and the pages are filled with calls to the universe and proclamations of good fortune.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
While it seems a little silly, I think that blind faith carried me through with a sense of maybe!
Maybe this will be something!
Maybe I could be great at it!
Maybe this will contribute.
Nowadays, I spend a majority of my time working, expanding this maybe! into a tangible reality. It all requires me to be fully engaged and give myself in every aspect, whereas before I could make money while walking through a shift on autopilot. My stress levels spike way higher than ever and I’m no longer riding on the fumes of unbridled youth.
But on my last night in Tucson I was chatting with my aunt about how wild it is to find footing in your twenties. It was an ongoing theme of our conversations and midway through she asked if I was happy. Tipsy from a mezcal, I said yes without hesitation. Retracing the steps of how I got here feels like stringing together chance encounters. As I walked her through the highlights of the past few years, I found myself connecting dots that seemed inconsequential or just another maybe when they happened.
Going along feels like hopping across a river, one rock at a time.
Sometimes you stay on a small rock for a little too long. It feels safe but there’s no way to really move your body without falling off and getting carried away by the rapids. You’re afraid you might not find the right stepping stone or unsure of what to take with you to the next place.
Then you find a series of small, unstable rocks. Your feet can barely fit and you have to keep going to not get swept away. That quick footed moment can be one of innovation, learning fast what works for you and what doesn’t.
Perhaps you land on a big flat boulder— you gain a bit of time to rest and survey the next leap. You can even build something on the big flat boulder and either leave it there for others or utilize it in the river crossing.
Meanwhile the water is just rushing by. Every once in a while it brings something along that you didn’t know you needed.
In the most wonderful times of all, the stream becomes calm enough that you can dip in and get a ride downriver.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul.
It’s all about timing—trusting that sometimes chaos is divine in disguise.
That’s all for today.
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xx
James