Tomorrow is your birthday. The one here, I mean. The one that we would celebrate with pink champagne. I saw you this time last year. The champagne flowed and the rain came down in endless sheets, granting permission for stillness and the intimacy of friends, Spirit Partners. There was so much in all that nothingness.
I know your soul's journey continues, but mine has only made halting progress without you. The other day I asked you for a breadcrumb: this is so hard, what am I doing, where am I going? The tiniest voice behind my ear said, "Sssshhhh. Keep going." And for a moment, my monkey mind was quiet.
My eternal quest for the next thing, the right thing, The Path, makes me anxious, especially since I always feel like I'm not doing enough or something right. Coming up short is an exhausting story. My myth: I "should" be doing something that has value, as if breathing didn't have value enough. A search for profundity ignores the fact of the profound in, well, most everything. I'm thinking your birthday gift to me is, once again, permission to be still. My gift to you is to reaffirm our promise to be Spirit Partners, to journey, to learn. I just miss doing that without you here, Little One.
Your birthday is in Spring. This is good. It's a time of renewal. It's a time when wonders burst from hidden things. I'm going to try to sit with it, sit with permission to myself to be still. Quietude is a mountain for me, so I reckon this will take some work, but it is work you taught me so much about tackling. The mindfulness of Spring is the mindfulness of you.
It's time for another guest post, my fine feathered friends. Litachiquita is coming into her own with her unique brand of humor and appreciation. We'd love your feedback.
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I'm halfway round the world, wondering how on earth I got here. Let's see...I remember boarding at JFK (or was it Newark?? dang.), changing planes in LA, and landing in Sydney. I remember picking up a rental car and beginning the 12 hour trek up the coast, heading towards Brisbane and an old friend's wedding. I remember all of it, but what I still could not figure out is how I landed HERE, in this particular moment.
I am traveling with my husband and we have stopped for the night in the sweet town of Bellingen, NSW. My husband had never visited the country before, so I had laid out a pretty industrious itinerary for showing him as much as we could in a 7 day window.
Bellingen is part of what's known as the "Waterfall Way" and is nestled into a rain forest - what I figured would be a nice change of pace from the cities and the seaside towns that made up the majority of our trip. I had booked us into a funky little hostel that had great vibes in all the reviews, and was really looking forward to doing some exploration in a part of Australia I'd never been before.
We arrive with our usual amount of bickering in the car, and then set out to explore the tiny town. We have dinner at the local typical Australian pub/hotel, and I say something deemed snarky or stupid, and I find myself left at a table before our food arrives, with a husband storming off back to our hostel - at 6pm. I go for a walk to let things cool off, and when I return to our room, the lights are off, there is a half eaten pizza on the floor, and my husband is asleep. At 7pm. I am at a loss, but this isn't the first time I have found myself in this situation. I feel awkward bopping around the hostel by myself, and I'm still kinda jet lagged so I just admit defeat and crawl into bed next to my indifferent other half.
After staring at the ceiling for a good half an hour trying to figure out where exactly everything has gone wrong, someone in the hostel sits down to the piano in the common room and begins to play. It's a beautiful, mournful song, and one that I recognize. I wrack my brain.....aha! It's from Amelie:
As I lay there listening to this gorgeous mini-concert (husband laying unmoved next to me), this is what is going through my head: "OH MY GOD! THIS MUSIC IS AMAZING! I can't believe I'm HERE! On the other side of the universe! Life is so wonderful! There are so many beautiful things EVERYWHERE! At every turn, in every crappy moment, there is something phenomenal happening, and this guy? This guy is missing ALL of them."
Ok, so just for clarification's sake, I am not some new-age nut job, and I don't walk around in a haze petting squirrels and making daisy chains. But come on, most everyone I know - even if touched by setbacks - has a pretty damn good life (1 in every 6 people on earth entered the 21st century unable to read a book - so if you can read, your life already falls into the PDG category) and I think it's pretty important for us all to recognize that.
So I get out of bed and follow the music downstairs (after putting some pants on, let's not frighten the children!), bringing a book for company. I then sit there for the next hour, listening to a fellow traveler treat a handful of people to a night of music. And it was fantastic.
Fast forward a month, and I am waiting for the G train at the Metropolitan stop with my husband. A busker playing the accordion, who is there frequently, begins to play.....
The same beautiful song!
A smile breaks out across my face as I recall the magical moment of having a stranger perform the same song for me while sitting on a porch amidst a rain forest on the other side of the world - this song bringing together these two universes so far apart from one another. I turn to my husband, wanting to share my smile, but he is glaring down the tracks, impatiently awaiting our train. Not a hint of recognition that he, too, was serenaded by this song before. He didn't experience the moment I did. You pick a partner because you think you've found someone to SHARE with, but sometimes you can be with someone and discover you're really not sharing anything at all. On the subway tracks, the voice returned: "This is AMAZING! This moment is so beautiful, and we are so lucky to be entertained as we wait for the stupid, crappy, never arriving G train."
That was all 8 months ago. After a million more this is awesome!!! moments that went unnoticed or flat out rebuked by my husband, I decided I would be better off experiencing my awesome!!! moments alone, as that is what I was essentially already doing. And as difficult a conclusion that was to come to, I am so much better for it. So I think we should all take a moment to seriously consider this statement by comedian Louis C.K.:everything is amazing and nobody's happy. (This is the best clip in the history of ever, so please watch it.)
He says, "Next time the internet isn't working on your plane, just take a moment to step back and realize "WOW!!! We are FLYING!!!!" And maybe next time you're waiting for that G train that never comes, you'll be more attuned to the random acts of amazing that are happening around you :)
And you? What's one of your "this is awesome!!!" moments?
About the author:
Litachiquita spent her childhood bopping around Europe, being forced to go to boring museums and stuffy antique stores. Fittingly, she grew up to be a museum/cultural administrator, and now loves hanging out at the Brooklyn Flea. She likes laughing more than anything, and recently downloaded an auto-tuner app on her phone and recommends you all do the same. She always had a love for writing, but this is her first ever blog, so please, be gentle! - Until she started her own blog of stories about "life through funny colored glasses" called For Serious Batman. Head on over there.
When your world is dark and smoky, just envision yourself in a dimly lit Havana nightclub back in the day. Mine is The Flamingo Room. Bring a friend, muddle a mojito. This is a Buena Vida social club - even when, especially when, you feel less than groovy.
