🌸 03.20.21
First day of spring and the branches are already plump with nesting birds and buds. On a late afternoon jog, I passed someone who half-screamed to the river, "Thank god it's fucking beautiful out!"
At times, getting to know myself is like chasing my own shadow: wondering, as it happened with Peter, what it'd look like for my shadow to run away, for me to have to stitch it back. I've never been able to eye the darker parts of myself, but you're right—it's because I don't know them well. I ought to invite them for tea someday.
I'd forgotten how movement is the thing that has always made me feel alive. The mind in motion, the body humming with anticipation. Fear numbs the senses, locks them into paralysis. Why should I choose that over lightness? Over the lithe and nimble sensation of leaping?
Perhaps self-learning can be more of a stretching motion. Not retreating into the shadows, but studying the shadows themselves. The way they flicker across a wall and yawn into the sidewalk. The way they dance.
—P