I wrote this piece in an afternoon writing workshop, circa Halloween 2022. Only the lull of an overcast, half-asleep afternoon coupled with the freedom to slow down and the invitation to allow other worldy ideas into my brain (thank you spooky season) enabled me to write this piece that I now think of as my manifesto for living.
This piece is a cautionary tale - a warning to me of what will happen if I pursue what this world tells me is important. It's also an invitation to flourish, to grow into the unknown letting my heart and gut guide me to the people and places that make me glow. My sacred contracts with myself are many: daily movement; nutritious foods; love and gentleness with self, others, and this world (remembering that "no" and friction with others is often their fear, or mine, talking over our intrinsic need to connect - we are all related).
Other sacred contracts are still revealing themselves to me - like how to change access to primary care, the food supply, and the built environment of small towns across America for biking, walking, sharing, nourishing, healing, and being in community with an attitude of abundance - instead of in competition with scarcity mindset, everyone rushing to get somewhere, faster, behind the wheel of a car.
Dear reader, what's your sacred contract? If asking your Self this question sounds crazy or scares you, good! Go into that place and see what happens.
Oct 31, 2022
half of me is red, and half of me is yellow. orange is my middle ground, but i rarely spend time in that middle mellow space. a woman who does reiki told me my creative side needs more love. immediately i imagined my yellow self, breathing and flowing on my mat, in the old montessori school in the old italian neighborhood within walking distance of my old building that holds my old apartment with its old hardwood floors, still creaking and shining, circa 1924. old things bring out my yellow self. cast iron pans. my grandfather's handwritten x ray requisition forms from the typewriter. honey, the immortal food. trees, older than you and me, and wiser than all of us combined.
learning and practicing the old ways are how i polish my yellow self. each old skill learned is more yolky pigment rubbed into my skin. i know how to make coffee when the power goes out. i know how to sleep outside, drink water from the river, be unplugged for days. i know how to delete instagram for years* and have no regrets. i know how to fill my brain and soul with nothing, so that i can create instead of consume.
i bought an air fryer last year, but i still know how to use my dutch oven. i buy my vegetables in plastic right now, but someday they will come from the dirt in my garden.
the red side of me is seduced easily by new things and the idea that my life will be better when. a new home, new shoes, new leggings. red me reacts, doesn’t know how to slow down or savor the important, would burn the whole garden in a moment and hire a company to implant perfect two inch high green grass that i will never sit on to enjoy. yellow me knows i would rather have raised beds, and time to tend them.
i am scared of red me. scared that she will take over and choose a future devoid of the important, and full of the urgent. scared that i will wake up one day, red, red, red, alarm bells finally ringing when i look in the mirror and realize this path didn’t have a heart after all.
*Note: I have been blissfully free from the confines of the brain-rotting social media platforms since 2018 (with few exceptions to log into Facebook to sell things). It remains the best thing I have ever done for my brain and my life.
