In Marrow

Tesni writes an update about the Kenyan baby house and it arrives as a reminder of how life would have been different had we stayed. I do have the power to change, exchange, rearrange the energy, but it seems like it would cause chaos, hurt or harm to those I care about the most. Does this matter? Before dawn I read, “Anyone who is unable to leave the requests of others unanswered has not entirely transcended egocentricity.” (ACIM) Maybe this idea implicates sacrifice as something entirely unknown to the Cosmos, arising solely from fear. Am I victimizing others or myself?

Rain – snow – rain. This morning there is only snow and it is erasing all hints of thaw in a total white-out. March continues to embody transition. As a woman, I have eaten the fruits of my labor but I am both overweight and still hungry, missing the moon, summer stars and all the sizzle of bare, soul-to-soul aliveness. Maybe winter has just gone on too long. The weather is as much prophesy as science.

I read this poet who wrote something about how being with a certain woman was like being a fish in a frying pan. Yet he goes on to speak of the times he'd rather burn to death than be without her. In my marrow, I get that. It is not a lighthearted thing to evoke fish or burning – opposites which could not be more related. I think that is what I want, despite all the science pointing towards the freedom of just being a fish in a still, deep lake.

Little by little, winter after winter, a marriage falls asleep. That is beautiful too, you know. I guess the thing is, I find beauty in the rest but also, in the burning skillet. I sit by the riverbank, neither fish nor tourist, watching clear, cold waters move further downstream.