“Open Hands” Spring 2019

Each morning I am filled with hope as the sun rises, the possibility of what the day could bring, the soft pink light on the mountains, the birds chirping. It’s so beautiful, it’s easy in the morning. By the afternoon, the light is harsh, the shadows harsher. What was delightful drags on. Spring is fickle, full of anxiety, worry. Things are trying to grow; there’s back and forth, back and forth, uncertainty at what will emerge in the end. (Impatient I’m patient Impatient I’m patient – here, again.) I feel uneasy wondering what will happen after Austria, uncertain what comes next, wondering if I let go, if what is right will come back to me. I want to learn to live like this, to love with open hands, freely, without expectation, without control.

Most days I feel like a child unable to balance on a bike: “I am afraid!” My movement is rigid, resistant; I want to be fluid, free. I feel full of hope in the mornings and doubtful by the afternoon: is there any sense to life? I forget to water the plants in my room, and I sing to them–it’s silly–please don’t die, live live live. I rewatch Interstellar and cry about every twenty minutes and am reminded just how big the universe is. I lie in my bed and look out the window, up at all the stars, the beautiful moon, “Is this some kind of sick joke?” I don’t know what it all means, and my heart starts fluttering wildly like the Föhn, in panic, afraid – what is happening what is happening – as it all spins out of control. Or so it feels. I want to learn to love with open hands, but my fists are clenched. It feels like a dead end, another ending, Austria slamming the door in my face. My breath is tight and shallow. The future’s clouded. It is what it is. But: look at the sky, feel the wind, the light on your face!

I write my dreams and do my morning pages, and I say I am feeling disconnected from my intuition, but I think the truth is, I have heard what it has to say and do not like what it is telling me. But, but, but, but…. “open hands!” But no, this hurts, this hurts, to feel like something is pried from you, slipping through like air, dying in your clasp, suffocating. It’s never been easy for me, even though I swim.

Inhale, exhale. No, I am not certain there is any sense to life. No, I don’t know what it all means. Was the mystery card a light at the end of the tunnel or darkness enveloping me, a return to womb, gestation? No, I do not know.

So this is what you do: you dance in the sunlight and again in the moonlight and you water your plants and you breathe the fresh air and you say “I do not know I do not know.” But “what is right will return to me.” Trust this. Hold your palms open, turn your hands up as you move in your body, drip your hands into the water and let the current carry you along. Does this make sense? No, but it’s really all you can do.

P.S. hope you can see the video above.