Day 272: Solstice

December 21, 2020
Day 272

Mani received an Echo and we set it up in the kitchen. It has been a long time since I've had music in the house that wasn't coming from a computer or phone. Right now, George Winston is playing and the twinkle lights are twinkling. The poignancy of any single moment of aliveness is almost too much to bear sometimes. Tonight, Aviva and I got curbside falafel, but the falafel place was out of fries so we placed a whole separate order just for fries from somewhere else, then watched the last three Modern Love episodes. After we ate, V put a pillow against my legs and lay down. I stroked her hair while we watched and Chupie snored and all of the love stories collided under a single summer rainstorm in NYC before any pandemics and for a moment time kind of stood still, the longest night stretching out all around us in every direction, so many lives happening, and the tilting of this part of the planet back towards its sustaining star, a small moon whispering to every ocean, rivers rushing on every continent, a planet groaning under the weight of too much hunger and expectation and so many individual hearts beating and all the last and first breaths in unison, nothing new under that very sun, poetry and shuttered buildings and gutted cities and squatters and more languages than we can even imagine, the whole tower of Babel quaking at its foundation or has it already fallen, have we already fallen, is this already fallen and so far gone that grace can only come in the smallest miracle moments, a nurse holding a patient's hand, an ambulance driver who knows every second counts, the driver who doesn't pull over, more concerned with his own rush than the life in the balance, such a crushing coexistence of care and callousness is breathtaking. And then there are the ones just now leaving, waving as they walk through the revolving door in the sky, walking towards the light, dropping clothes and names and memories behind them, a trail of petals or tears, regrets, moments unwitnessed and unrecorded, forever rejoined into some oneness we come to the world craving. Then comes a breath, a return to this present moment, books on the coffee table and coffee to prep for tomorrow, a slow settling into not needing anything to be different, into knowing that time is nothing but this thing we cling to like rungs on a ladder, afraid to let go, but who is holding the ladder, who will spot us, but remember we've already fallen and now we might as well lie down next to each other a while, just lie here and stare up at the cloudy sky knowing the stars are there, beyond what we can see, beyond what we'll ever understand, beyond and beyond and beyond, in a place where maybe, just maybe, our whispers reach after light years of travel and a butterflies wings in some faraway place and the highest octaves of a piano playing a song of your youth, bringing you home until you realize home never left you.