[Publisher's note: Original music, "Sunrise," by Kyle Porter was composed to accompany this piece. Click below to play.]
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Don’t bother to understand. There’s only space for one.
The rain had soaked her, flesh dripping under her blouse, as she entered the magical café of lonely, lethargic soulings. She wanted the new world to stop motion and offer her a coffee, a cigarette, a pad of paper, and a pen. But the water was dripping in small, unnoticeable places of her body and the discomfort of not knowing what she was really feeling kept her from stepping inside.
She thought it could be equally exciting to stomp in the dirty street river, stripping away her socks so toes could turn charcoal meat and the next time she walked by, she’d have a place to return as witness to the brave.
Her socks were already wet though and all she could think about was her father. How long it’d been since they embraced and how few people knew how to comfort her.
She floated another few steps and watched as the moon hovered above, dripping a moondrop of dew like a sweet kiss, tapping her cheek, a reminder of the first time she danced. As a child, with the naked understanding of one’s self, she sang to the tune and leaped off the chair, soaring through the air without a witness or a care. Just the memory of being there.
Maybe there is only space for one.
We leave pieces of ourselves behind, in our mother’s arms, in our youth, in our lovers’ beds, and in the twists and turns of our own soul. The dance is the sacred debris we exchanged for a chance at love. The feet wet with dark dirt and scum, like kids running on summer’s back. Abandon.
A friend of mine filmed herself running naked — jumping in to the cold waters of the sound. Her spirit holding onto that which we shake out of ourselves for the comfort of others. We dissect, we inspect, we neglect, and one day, we fail to walk through the door of the magical café. Maybe the only magic is passing through the arch to join the others. The new world is nothing more than the old world reinspired and cradled back into existence.
Friendships, relationships, marriages…when we stop bothering to understand, maybe there is only space for one to wander out and reclaim the dance, take off our shoes and walk the streets — get naked in the water of our own life.
I had a conversation the other day, a kind of challenge or debate, that resulted in “it’s both, and.” I nodded yes and didn’t ask what he meant. I understood. And it held as a kind of a simple turn of our relation to all things. Both, and – new, and – old, and…
The “and” puts a kind of elongation and harmonious ever-more-ness. We could always reach an understanding with that much room to breathe, couldn’t we?
So new is the new year that we shed the day before on paper and say, today, I start over. I go from here. So, if tomorrow I can do that again, and again, always trusting in letting go of yesterday, maybe I’ll understand. Maybe I’ll take my socks off, get my feet dirty, and hug my dad.
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Both images by the author.
