To Be And Breathe

I want to write. I want to write because I want to feel. I want to feel because something in me, deep inside, is stuck. Usually writing helps me through the mortar and bricks of being that form walls around what I know, and makes the door frame available so I can find the threshold to the unknown.

Life is nothing but thresholds. Being born is a threshold. Learning to walk is a threshold. Going to school is a threshold. Leaving school is a threshold. Falling in love is a threshold. And thresholds bridge us from the known to the unknown.

Intimacy is its own threshold, full of boundaries—lines we draw, lines we cross.

There is an intimacy with self. Writing is like the horizon, the line we see, gaze at, follow to the end without seeing the end, trace from a beginning we cannot trace but know in the realm of now. Now I am looking at the horizon. I see it. It seems to end but it is only a mirage and only ends when I change my view to see something new—that now ends, and another begins.

The horizon of writing puts me in relationship with meaning and maps feelings so I can find my way.

You see, I am lost. I am stuck. I teach yoga and don’t do asana, much. I write but have not been writing. I watch TV for need of noise and company. I eat. My connections of intimacy on a day to day basis come more from my virtual world of friends than those I can see or talk to in person.

The intimacy I knew for 16 years ended and what I learned is that intimacy I thought I had has been lacking for years.

Friendship remains. Gratitude stays close.

Tears fall at odd moments.

I live on an edge I cannot soften.

I feel a peace.

I feel alone.

But most of the time I feel like I don’t feel. I coast. I am the wheel on a skateboard. I don’t ride it though. But I roll on the floor, close to the ground. Friction keeps me going. There is no pain. There is no joy. I rarely laugh. I rarely cry.

I feel like I am too much, as a principle. I feel like I need too much. I feel like I want too much. I feel like I am too much for most and more than anyone wants at any one time.

The good news in writing and capturing the view that holds nothing but an ongoing line is tears fall here and there. The good news is the door found the doorframe and I don’t know what’s outside but I am getting closer to what’s inside. The good news is the boundaries are blurring and getting clearer at the same time.

The good news is this threshold does not mark an ending or beginning.

There’s something beyond marking time that lives at that one place I know and cannot see, that exists beyond the horizon, within my mind and out of my reach. This something lives between dawn and dusk any day and before dawn and after dusk. This something is the door handle I cannot quite grasp though I see the door. This something takes the known and unknown and begins to confuse the two in the epiphany of now. For actually now is all I know—and is beyond boundaries by being a simple point that gives me focus and releases me from the feelings of being stuck if only I can be and breathe.

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Ed: Catherine Monkman

{Photo: Flickr.}