Eclipsing Things

Yesterday in a Saturday afternoon power yoga class, I laid on my back numbly as tears dampened the outer corners of my closed eyelids. My limbs were shaky and infused with breath, my shirt clinging in that living organic way of expended movement and my mind was clearer than it had been in weeks. A long-haired dreaded blonde instructor walked past my mat barefoot and his voice was like a love-song, "You are a child of the universe," he said, "as much a part of this Earth as every rock, every tree, every blade of grass. You have a right to be here and you have a right to experience this world in your own way. Everything that has happened to you has absolutely happened for a reason." That's when I cried. I hoped he couldn't see. I hoped that in sneaking out before the other unfolded forms I'd hidden my unexpected surge of somethingness. You never expect someone to say exactly what you need to hear exactly when you need to hear it. Especially when it's a stranger.

Today I watched a solar eclipse from the sidewalk. Kids rode their bikes up and down the street, oblivious, as my hair caught fire and my cardboard's pin-hole window sparkled with explosions of light. It was so beautiful. Every bush, every bee, every blooming bud was simply soaked with the saturation of the sun. It wasn't just a cyclical event for calendar crossings; the living things breathed more deeply and celebrated their unity with that scorching star. I felt it, I was there. It was like a yoga class for Earth where the energies all merged and focused on a sunlit breath, then bowed their heads in an end-of-day-namaste. The moon passed by in a crescent shadow and eventually the light melted from the tips of trees and normalcy picked up its hat like that glimpse, that surge of somethingness, might not have even taken place. And if it did, we simply got a pinhole viewing experience of its taste.

Sometimes it doesn't seem like there's much right in the world, but sometimes you have to just surrender yourself to not thinking about it. If I could absorb everything beautiful I've ever seen or experienced and live on the waves of those memories, nothing could touch me that was tainted or scarred. But they squeak through, like menacing little intruders, to furrow a brow or stifle a smile. I miss my dog. I escape by reading. I sometimes can't breathe. I sometimes create tunnels in my bed where I imagine nobody can find me. Sometimes nobody tries.

But yesterday I worked. People told me I looked like a movie star and my coworkers smiled excitedly as we talked about books and hiking trails and art. It's fulfilling really, to exist somewhere happily with contentment and ease. I love my house. I love my cat. I love the night sounds outside my window of freshmen university students smoking pot and playing guitar on porches. Tomorrow, Topaz comes back from her dad's and we'll hold hands down her school's hallway and talk to each other in sweet voices about innocent things and simplistic perspectives. I can't wait. I had my ground-breaking euphoria for the weekend, and now I can do everything absolutely for a reason.