Arguably Blessed
(Excerpt from the book: The Mountain Moved Me)
Must I have to remind myself where I belong and where I am? Longing to put on a new-to-me Little Red Riding Hood, red wool jacket in the middle of February… in Florida. I long for what I cannot have. Energetically my bones are aching, drooling over the Haines, Alaska nixle cellphone reports of a ‘winter storm warning’, 4,189 miles away from home. “Wake up, Vanessa”, I yell in my head, “you have everything you could possibly need!” But I am human, I want more. More of what I don’t have.
People’s projected dreams, look at me as if I were ‘blessed’. Arguably, I am. Really, I’m just living out this life in which my highest self rules. Looking around I’m in the backseat of an electric self-driven car. I hear a soft direct female voice, “Please child, put on your seat belt to start the vehicle, I will take you to your necessary destination.” I wonder if I could put in an order, of where to? Then again this isn’t fast food. I check my window, it only goes halfway down.
Every morning I pull myself out of my cocoon, partially unwilling, to do what’s uncomfortable – to ground and give homage to the sun. I beckon my children who reverberate my inner thoughts of comfort-disruption because who really wants to go outside of their home immediately from rising? This primordial feeling of ‘ick’. I don’t want to get my barefeet dirty. I don’t want to get out of bed when I was just dreaming of a life better than my own. I don’t want to step on an ant community and have an allergic reaction. I look down at my feet which are filled with burs and slippery mist now. I don’t want to reach up to the sky stretching my body beyond its container, what if I slip out? What then? But I do it anyway, as if I’m leading my lambs to the holy land where the sun rises, blasting infrared rays, lighting up our pineal glands. We go to the light, whining.
I am my holiness. When I pray, I give thanks. Sometimes I call my sun-showing-up, ‘Sun Cording’, as if I have an umbilical cord to the sun. I massage it, directly giving appreciation for it showing up too. Does the sun ever get sleepy, pulling up the clouded covers hitting the snooze button? I feel you too sun, even though we’re morning people.
I noticed gratitude arrived. I noticed I can want two contradicting things in life, much like how I live. I don’t have to prove my devotion to any such land because when I’m ‘here’ I’m monogamous. Shucks, I think this is what happiness feels like? I like this. I haven’t really allowed myself to experience this, believing I’m a fraudulent lover. Believing I was put here as a Nark. Who is my boss? (me laughing) “They’re probably not even in this galaxy”, I mutter. I thought being a Nark was to take notes, to study, to view, to figure out how it works, and what makes it special? I take myself entirely out of it. “I’m working here, this isn’t a vacation”, I repeat, repeatedly in my mind, “I can’t afford those luxuries.” I tiptoe around, never seeming to land, yet I cannot hide. I’m never quiet, reluctantly I’m New Jersey volume even when I’m not talking. I have so much fire inside me, it’s why the cold climates of the northern territory balance me and I fear summer by the equator. I’m not happy if I’m hot. And nobody wants an unhappy hot Vanessa.
*“Vanessa could brighten up the atmosphere of a morgue with her upbeat demeanor and ready wit! – Book: The Hidden Truth of Your Name
To live in two worlds is alien enough, but to be circumstantially *forced to, is embarrassing as if somehow it’s our fault. Gratitude seems to be pushed as the norm, sometimes from others, many times from ourselves. The conflict internally to ‘be grateful’ is toxic. “I will not drink your poison”, I yell quietly inside my helmet head, “God damn, people’s opinions!” Many times I envision me being here, on planet earth, all alone. Would I care about what others think then, even when they don’t exist? My answer is no. Que Sound of Music me spinning around on a mountain top singing “the hills are alive”. Which brings me back home to myself. Everything I’ve been fighting, trying to identify, to put into a PFD checkbox of where do I live, is from another’s questioning. Turns out, I don’t fucking care! I like it *here! In fact, I love being ‘here’ wherever here is! I reach up to the sky, bending backwards, sticking out my dragon tongue hoping the sun reaches to my insides, exhaling my existence all over the place. Turns out today is perfectly placed. That’s MY gratitude.