love letter from 97-year old Erika
Good morning, you!
Yes–an exclamation point! And another!
I see you where you are. How you are almost able to feel something that is yours alone without emotionally echolocating to loss for self-orientation. You are so close to knowing how wide to reach til you feel your own walls, trusting your own footing, and welcoming gravity again as a gift, not a crushing punishment.
You have always been a “longer”–a wanter of wanting, a feeler of the just out of reach. It can seem to some that you are never fulfilled–by them or anything. Like you are holding up an impossible standard, a yard stick of mis-measure–but it’s not how you see it. You see it as fuel to keep going. This more-shaped hole is why you dance like you’re being devoured and devouring in the same instant. It’s why you cry everyday and sometimes bite something until it bleeds. But this ness can also conflict with your sense of enough-ness that is your birthright and meditation mantra. Enough. So many times you have rolled that marble around the soft tissue and hard teethbacks. So many times you have spit it out.
There is prayer found in the poetry of odd places…like that old favorite from Belly in the 90s that we still hear as we’re falling asleep:
There is a light under the ocean
Under the ocean, there’s things shining everywhere
There is a lightkeeper under the blanket here
Under the blanket, there’s things shining everywhere
There’s things shining everywhere.
Makes me smile just to think of it. Go under. the ocean. the blanket. your skin. your sadness. There is a lightkeeper. There’s things shining everywhere. And if you need to turn on your bio sonar, try tuning it to joy — forage for that for a moment. be a little happy. You’re allowed. The ocean is wide…but you light the ocean from behind…
With infinite love and happiness,
97 year-old Erika