rising and fading

“Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled— to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery. I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing— that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.”

(Mary Oliver, House of Light)

--

The best things I write begin as fragmented thoughts scribbled on scraps of loose paper.

After the others leave for dinner, we sit, listening to records and watching the lavender smoke unfurl from the smoldering incense stick he has placed on the floor nearby. With each low beat, air puffs from the twirling player, bursting through the trail of smoke clouding--then unclouding--the air.

My book lies on my lap. It's been there all afternoon, but I've only read a handful of pages, one paragraph at a time. Distractions fill both the house and my mind, and I find myself constantly picking up my phone. To buy a birthday present for the dear babe turning one. To look up the definition of that enigatic word. To see who liked my latest photo on Instagram. I hate that my mind is so scattered today.

He has turned the music up very loud now that we are alone in the house.

I've been thinking, lately, that sometimes I would just like to walk around with a post-it taped to my back, a sort of disclaimer: "Not as courageous as you might think. Also not as boring. Not unfriendly or unkind, so much as occasionally out-of-my-depth."

And by out-of-my-depth, I mean, that I sometimes walk around working very, very hard to get breath into my lungs. Because it is so much easier to be alone than it is to be around people.

Our love of folk music has deepened, and he is over-the-moon excited for the festival we will be attending in June. But sometimes I fear his music obsession is broadening to include country songs as well--a genre we both swore to hate, always.

"This is folk. Real folk." He assures me when I cringe at the twang in the singers voice.

But then a popular song comes on and I am comforted.