An Ode.

Originally posted September 23, 2013

Life shuffles us along.  We wear our shoes thin.  And our fizzy, buzzing spirits get stuck, jammed into a corner, unable to reach their tendrils up and out of our middles.  We can still feel joy while this is happening.  We can still feel sorrow.  We feel, but are aware of an absence. There is longing - we can feel it pulling, can sense the need for release, but our heads are tipped slightly down, our feet busy moving, ever-slowly.

And then sometimes there's a moment.  A series of moments.  A reel of film.  These moments, they put their palms on your forehead and push.  You look around.  You take the deepest breath you've ever tasted and as you exhale your eyes are full.  You smile a little bit and bite your lip and breathe in again, this time inhaling the moment you just shuffled into.  You look at your feet.  You pick them up, you push your shoulders back, and you take a step.  You swing your arms.  You are striding now, straight ahead, into something you'd forgotten about.  Now that you're in it, now that you're walking with your eyes scanning and your middle straightened out, you wonder why this feeling feels so simultaneously new and ancient, so shiny and so well-worn.  You hang back for a moment to watch.  They continue, your people, down the street, dodging folks coming the other way.  Their feet are up, too, their arms are swinging, too, they have knowing grins on, too.  You are buoyant, the whole lot of you, and every single one of you knows it.  You are co-psychics.  You are co-conspirators.  

You are movement and shining, a web of centrifugal force. 

And then, some time later, things settle.  Your feet slow again, and remember that they like to shuffle.  You stop. 

You push your forehead up with your own two palms and look around.

You see. 

These people, they are you.  You are them.  You try to think about why, about how.  "Let it go," you think, but of course you can't, because you're magnets.  "Move on," you whisper as you look at them.  "Is it really so special?" you wonder. 

These people, who knew you before you did, who still look at you knowingly, waiting for you to see what they see.    

Do not move on.  It is that special.  

Go to them.   

And when you get back, when you catch up, once your strides are synced and your arms are swinging, scan your smiling eyes, and head out into the shit and muck and boundless bounty of this one crazy life.  

When we cease to shuffle, we keep beginning.  

*E