softening the gaze
what I am practicing, here and now
Left thigh compressing the cushion beneath me. Legs origami-ed as the sun shines through the porch screen. My sister’s corporate zoom call murmuring from inside. I have a little matcha left. Sky is covered in clouds. Birds chirping.
Again and again, I practice being with myself. With the multitudes– the crunch and the sweet. This morning, there’s some crunchy, stringy, malnourished whining pulling me around, trying to convince me of some dark doom lurking just beyond and ahead.
I need to say out loud that I am flailing in my practices. I am in the liminal and I don’t know what day it is or what I need to be doing (dramatic). I am in a messy soup of my own making. It feels lonely but i know it is interconnected with the messy soup of living in modernity right now.
This. A thread woven into a collective story. A reminder that what my system is experiencing is not separate from the world. My inner world, a reflection of collective values, systems, and beliefs. One of them being the lie of separation.
It’s lodged in my system. It’s squeezing around my heart and lungs. It’s a remnant of a colonial logic that we all have inherited in varying degrees and angles.
As difficult truths and patterns arise, how do I turn attention towards myself in a way doesn’t feel like surveillance or judgement day?
It’s here I notice a pattern, a familiar way of being that tries to replicate itself over and over again. It’s uncomfortable anddd it reminds me of what I’m seeking, healing, creating. The pain is a flare, a signal to shift– my perspective, my thoughts, my body. She is asking me to choose something different right now. Choose to be in relationship. Not just an observer, a judge, a disembodied philosopher. Get in there, be with her. Don’t float above and cast orders from a sterile dimension.
Relationship is really the magnus opus of my life and I don’t want to shy away or dilute this desire any more. It’s become too exhausting and untruthful to do so. It’s at the root of my movement and art practices. It’s what my heart most yearns for even if she closes herself off sometimes. It’s scary to admit because a part of me does not want to fail in public (or, a part of me wants to avoid conflict and discomfort :) ). It’s scary to let go of fantasies and live in the reality of my relationship constellation as it is now.
I desire a secure relationship with myself. With this moment. I desire capacity to be with all who is here right now– my sister in the other room, our ancestors watching over us, my sore ass cheek, the basil plant in the corner, my longings and tears, the humm of mechanical equipment in the distance, you here reading my words.
I name these desires and soften my gaze.
The way into relationship is not through an interrogation room. It is another way of being that I am feeling my way into. That I do not totally have words for right now. It’s in my exhale, and my willingness to stay and be seen. It is a practice I re-commit to, here and now.
I get a whiff of something fragrant, something soft and real.