In the setting sun I move amongst architecture and ground hallowed and historic. I am full of the basic necessities of life after eating my fresh grilled panini and cold beer overlooking the Colosseum. The streets here are cobbled and cluttered with the sounds of impatient drivers and scurrying pedestrians. I remove my shoes to feel the shadows cast my feet onto these ancient rocks. In a glance Rome is the smell of dust and tomatoes, bugs, cars, buses, tourists with sore feet, blankets laid over in trinkets and souvenirs, costumed Roman Gladiators and the upside down triangle of fingers brandished in constant emphasis. The past, the present, the old the new, things that are built for now and things that are built for all time, they grow and decay in a garden of din and beauty, wavering with the horizon, buzzing under the pressure. This, as all things, victims of the same fatal disease tearing the holes through these ruins.
Just ten hours ago I was home. Now, on my own again my eyes are open and the heart leads on, past eroding edifices and into winding unlit passages that spin me face first into this living history book. I'm back. One with my intuition. Making proper turns without a map, stumbling into everything I need to see. I can be so many things out here, covered in the tapestries of these historic worlds. I can feel tradition pass through the walls that are falling down around me; it stretches and grows the skin covering the insatiable girl residing within it. And through my placid gaze I realize how much better that skin feels now in the triumph of all these memories, under that warm ichor sun that is falling slowly, this July evening in Rome.
It isn't lost on me now, how fortunate I am to be here. To live life filled with adventure and reward. To know that the world is a place made infinitely smaller and simpler through the experience of it. At every turn we can wake up to the joy that is the inevitability of this; we are given what we need, if we allow ourselves to be shown just what that is. To live, to breath, to see, to exist in all our imperfection, surrounded by the intangible, is the essence of living that which is greater than ourselves.
Before I went home I pined and longed for the sound of poplar trees. Longed for the fulfilled promise that we could swim this flood of newness and isolation for that familiar harbor. But what was missed drifting for that ephemeral shore was that home was always apart of the rising seas around us. We carry a piece of all the souls who crash into us in that particular way that causes us to call them friends, lovers, and family. Their blessings are in the breeze and finally, finally, I can feel it here. The pride and thanksgiving accrued in 24 years. For me continuing on, being alive in this way, chasing these ideas around the world is more than given in any embrace. To show up again to challenge old trauma and all preconceptions. To deliver on our potential. That is the connecting solidarity between me, the ones I love, and the experiences I long for. I see more. I do more. I live more, for all of us. Because the world needs it. Because we need it;
to be lifted up,
Just ten hours ago I was home. Now, on my own again my eyes are open and the heart leads on, past eroding edifices and into winding unlit passages that spin me face first into this living history book. I'm back. One with my intuition. Making proper turns without a map, stumbling into everything I need to see. I can be so many things out here, covered in the tapestries of these historic worlds. I can feel tradition pass through the walls that are falling down around me; it stretches and grows the skin covering the insatiable girl residing within it. And through my placid gaze I realize how much better that skin feels now in the triumph of all these memories, under that warm ichor sun that is falling slowly, this July evening in Rome.
It isn't lost on me now, how fortunate I am to be here. To live life filled with adventure and reward. To know that the world is a place made infinitely smaller and simpler through the experience of it. At every turn we can wake up to the joy that is the inevitability of this; we are given what we need, if we allow ourselves to be shown just what that is. To live, to breath, to see, to exist in all our imperfection, surrounded by the intangible, is the essence of living that which is greater than ourselves.
Before I went home I pined and longed for the sound of poplar trees. Longed for the fulfilled promise that we could swim this flood of newness and isolation for that familiar harbor. But what was missed drifting for that ephemeral shore was that home was always apart of the rising seas around us. We carry a piece of all the souls who crash into us in that particular way that causes us to call them friends, lovers, and family. Their blessings are in the breeze and finally, finally, I can feel it here. The pride and thanksgiving accrued in 24 years. For me continuing on, being alive in this way, chasing these ideas around the world is more than given in any embrace. To show up again to challenge old trauma and all preconceptions. To deliver on our potential. That is the connecting solidarity between me, the ones I love, and the experiences I long for. I see more. I do more. I live more, for all of us. Because the world needs it. Because we need it;
to be lifted up,
in expectation,
purpose,
and joy.
and joy.
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