OSL

You board a bus and cross a country line, this summer never ceases to fill you with adoration. It's gift upon gift upon gift, and you even snuck in an extra lake swim when no one was looking. The four-leaf clovers inside your phone case begin to pile up and burst out of their holder, you're sure there's a metaphor in there but all you know is you feel joy at every turn. 

There are people on this earth who really take care of you, there are homes here to which you always have a key. There's a magic in there that you cannot begin to put words to. 

The bus rolls into Oslo. There's a transfer, a train, a sunny afternoon and the fjords glittering. There's an adventure ahead and another key in your backpack for later, gifts upon gifts that could never fit inside wrapping. You spent an entire life being afraid of Everything and suddenly you find that you're not. It's disorienting, but you do not kick it to the curb. 

I spent an entire life being afraid
of Everything
but I have an entire life left
to not.  

Rain Day

It's gray. Your windows face north and the sunlight doesn't reach your skin like you need it to. The computer stares at you with its demands and you're slowly realizing that maybe this little box is at the root of your weariness. Perhaps you were not made to while your life away in front of this little square with its incessant buzzing. It's a thought that bears mulling over. 

You think again about fire lookout season. 

They say the cloud cover will pass mid-day. You're not sure how long you can wait. One day you moved across the ocean and it taught you a life can take place in a million different ways. You've never been the same since. 

Maybe that's just what it is to live a life. 
You're never the same
once you've done it. 

Rokoko

What a gift it is, you think to yourself after the melee has quieted down. To live everywhere, to belong in any corner, to feel at home on any horizon. You see no more pride in the Stockholm inlet than the American Wild West, and it thrills you to realize. A whole life struggling with the either/or only to realize it's about the and/also. 

 Two weeks ago you were driving down English country road with a car full of dogs. One week ago you were alighting on medieval island shores. And here you are, staring at hundred-year-old rooftops in sunlight, squeezing more summer out of each step down the streets. I look at apartment listings and room shares, I look at country houses and sitting gigs, it's August and the world is still all opportunity. She writes to say life is a bitch and you haven't enough words to explain how wrong she is. 

We talked about you the other night, after the evening had gone dark and the children went to bed. Remembered your bright laugh and the darkness of your last few days. Remembered how we all walked out of that spring changed. I've never forgotten to be grateful for the lessons you taught me. 

Have never forgotten that staying alive
is the only reason I've done all these things that I've 
done. 

And I wouldn't want to live
without them.  

Ferry (v)

You drag a bag to the subway, light drizzle on the pavement and you fall in line with the Monday morning commuters on their way into fall. Their clothes have an air of defeat. Long pants. Umbrella. Key card. Didn't we just start the summer holidays, how are they over already? On the morning news, the meteorologist says even though it's the end of summer we've some warmer days ahead and you want to shout it from the rooftops. Don't give up before it's time! 

In the harbor, a ship lies waiting. One thousand, three hundred thirty-one people board. A few dogs. The Baltic Ocean ahead, not a speck on the horizon for hours until there, at the end, an island, a dock, another group of familiar faces and your heart grows to twice its size again. 

Yesterday, in a borrowed doorway, it was all goodbyes. A little too soon, always a little too soon.  Two years and change since you waved from the airport window. The years defy belief. His daughter grows into everything you could've hoped, a hundred years ago they waved you off on a train and she was just a baby. A thousand years ago you got drunk in a hidden bar and he didn't tell you she had already been dreamed into existence. Twenty-four hours ago you remembered what it is to carry a moment in your chest that is at once heavy as lead and light as air. The women on the ship say August is basically over but you know they're wrong. 

I will carry August with me
always. 

Farewells

It's too many goodbyes, you think, but relish in all the hellos you have yet ahead. It's a gift of your own making, and you're not too far gone to see it. I give myself this love, I give myself this summer. The train darts down the Swedish countryside and you wonder if there's a life hiding there somewhere. 

But it's only August, and none of the questions seem quite so intimidating, quite so dark. It's like they're just fun trinkets you turn over in your hand, like reliquaries in an old English manor house. 

A week ago you were driving against your instincts on a narrow country road, proving things to yourself you never thought you might. Now here you are thinking maybe the world is at your fingertips, after all. 

There was a time when you didn't want to see another day. You know there was, you can almost remember it now. It's just the disease isn't in you today, isn't gouging you out from the inside at this moment, and so the spectre of death as a welcome friend feels like a story you read in a book once, not like a promise you held on your fingertips. 

There will come a day when you don't want to die, 
you told yourself again, again, ad nauseam again,
as if saying it enough would make you believe it
(it didn't). 

Turns out, the prophecy coming true only added fuel to your fire. 

Not only do you not want to die 
now
but you want to live like a hundred stars burst inside of you. 

Like bursting into the stars 
is the gift itself.  

Idea

I am tired. The dog sleeps at my feet under the desk and I think maybe that's the better option. The first days of August are warm outside the window, but I can't fight off that small, worried voice in the back of my head that says fall is coming. It flinches at every chilly breeze, every inkling of cloud cover. You say it sits in your bones but you're starting to wonder if it's a learned fear after all, that it sits in your skin instead. After all, generations of your people have weathered those winters and survived to create you. Do you dishonor them by becoming so soft? 

You remind yourself that Novembers can be mild and delicious in New York. 

Yesterday, at the top of a hill, overlooking the Atlantic, the Mendips, the M5, I thought I am in a moment of my own creation, and it seemed such a gift. How many years was I frozen in catatonia, staring across the waters at other people, living their lives like they were allowed pursuits, thinking such allowances were not for me. 

It's strange the truths we teach ourselves to believe. 

You wonder if it's too late to believe something else.  

Worth

The days tumble from out of your hands, as they always do when you think you've bought yourself infinity. Perhaps you're a little less stressed about it these days. Maybe in the back of your mind somewhere you are making peace with yourself about your incessant imperfection. 

Maybe in the back of your mind somewhere you're starting to think perfection 
wasn't the right goal, anyway. 

You hike to the top of Glastonbury Tor, watch the English countryside spread out around you. There, the rolling hills, there, the lush hedgerows and stone cottaged villages, there the Bay and Wales behind it. Here, the land you've come to see, making itself known. The sun is bright, the sky blue, the breeze joyful. They hear your crumpled accent, ask where you're from, and you no longer worry about your crooked answers. It just is what it is. 

You long for your friends back home, in all your back homes, delight at the thought that you'll be seeing them soon again. There's a moment just before getting what you long for that is the sweetest thing in all the world, and lately it feels like you're living that moment over, and over, and over. 

Well, said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop 
and think. Because although eating honey was a very good thing 
to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it 
which was better than when you were, but he didn't know 
 what it was called. 

You know there will be fall again one day, 
there will be Darkness
and fear
and the unbearable lightness of 
no longer wanting to live

but it is not today. 

For a brief moment 
you are invincible,

and if this is the reward you get for
being alive

then alright.  

Prove

At some point it becomes too late to turn back, and you're signing the papers and moving ahead. It's not often you get the chance to prove yourself to yourself, and yet here you are, careening down the country roads in determination to accomplish something novel. 

Late last night, after the pub was closing and the proprietor gave you the day's artisan loaves for free, you found a hidden backroad back to your village where no one was driving. You floated home on your bicycle in the twilight, tipsy from the ales but heady mostly from the magic of summer evenings. 

How could I ever stop living life this way? How could I ever settle down and conform? 

The questions that seem so profound in winter
flutter away in the summer breeze. 

A moment of invincibility. 

Fair enough.  

Steel

Nerves of spaghetti, you tell her and feel it resonate into your leg muscles. Certain you've done difficult things before, you clench your teeth and vow to make it through this, too. It's not like you're going to war. Except, perhaps, against your own senses. 

It takes all day to construct a sentence. Takes all day to remember even your most shallow breaths. The noodles take up too much of your time, you've lost a whole life to the synapses sparking wildfires in your head. It's too sunny, too warm, to regret it now, but you know the sadness will catch up with you come fall. 

A whole life lost 
and to what? 

You promise yourself silently 

to at least appreciate when you get it

right.  

Wave

It's a perfect summer evening. The wind is gone, the sky clear blue again. Little clouds drift like lambs across the zenith, bathed in the warm glow of sunset. One day of sunshine and you forget all your worries, forget that you were ready to pack it in for winter and hope for another year. 

Humans are simple that way, you think. When all seems lost the storm abates, the fever breaks. You book a car. Convince yourself you'll figure out how to drive it when the time comes. 

There are fairies in the hedgerows, you just know it.  

You wonder how many years more you'll keep looking for another version of yourself in unknown fields.  

Wouldn't it just be easier to give in and accept the one you have? 

Wind

The gale sets in, blows clear through your head until you're not sure which way is up. You linger over coffee in the doorway while the panes bump against the 17th century stonework, think are we meant to do all this on our own? before the dogs bump you on their way out to bob for apples in the orchard. The forecast says easy-breezy days are over, you have time to panic before realizing that you're only a third of the way through your adventure, that August stretches ahead of you with promise of warm oceans and late nights, still. 

You think perhaps solitude draws the terrors out of you, takes them to the surface and gives them oxygen, but the truth is they're always there, isn't it? It's just in company there's no time to dissect them, to turn them over in your hand and try to get to the next step. Company is only a way to stave off the Darkness. 

But what does one do
with that? 

Admiral

It takes a few days before you realize what it is, that familiar feeling of something sweet but ethereal in the air. It's not the bleating of the sheep, or the tangle in the hedgerows. It's the butterflies. Red admirals lining the warm roads, tortoiseshells in the flowers and little white ones following us around in the afernoons. I spent a whole childhood with butterflies and now where have they gone?

A little voice whispers that it's not they who have gone, but I. That's the truth, of course, but I don't know what to make of it. It's Friday, the world has caught up to me, and I don't know what to make of anything. A kind delivery driver arrives with wine and strawberries and coffee, I've forgotten to add milk to the list but no matter. Tomorrow I will bike to the next village over, see what they may have to offer. 

I'm getting the insights for free.  

Bramble

The little bits of magic start to appear in the corner of your eye. The hedgerows tingle with hidden fairies, the blackberries along the country road taste sweeter than anything that's come across your tongue, laced with a sugar until now unknown. There are swans in the dykes, distant church bells across the valley. You feel it coming, you knew it would come, you were just always so slow about settling in. Your accent lilts, twists itself to fit the person at the other end of a conversation, you hear it stumble, momentary scratches on a chalkboard. The dogs ask you to finish work early and go for excursions around the property. You pour a glass of wine and follow them in the high, dry grass. Wonder if this is what a life could be like. 

After all, for a moment, yours is. 

 

Nerves

Every adventure is a challenge to your apprehensions. New sounds, new sensations, you train yourself to breathe across the hurdles and prepare yourself for bigger steps for days. Your accent stumbles and giggles across itself, you lie in a hammock in the early evening and remember how to read again. Is time slipping from your fingers again? Or are you playing your cards right, clearing the path for a cake walk through the rolling fields ahead?

Life is too short, always too short. Your days are so full and yet how hard to remember how it is to appreciate the world when you have it. 

All you can do is try. 

The hurdles will wait until you can climb them.  

Somerset

Weeks disappear in a rush, you do not write. Your journal is scribbled mayhem, trying to recall the exact color of the ocean on the west coast and the way the jellyfish stingers nettle your skin for just a brief moment before all you taste is salt. How your eyebrows turn white. How your heart rests differently in your chest when it is held up by those who've known you forever. How simple gratitude feels when everything is just the way you'd hoped. 

I arrived in England later than planned, only the slightest hint of dusk remaining as we careened through the sleeping villages. By the time I woke, rolling fields spread out around me, an old stone cottage sat on my shoulders, a foreign accent lilted around my tongue and I was unable to stop it. The dogs run ahead on our morning walks but they always find their way back. I wonder what it would be like to live here.

Weeks disappear, I do not write. 

Perhaps I don't always have to. The smell of an English rose can still linger, 
even when it's only in your mind.  

Arrive

Step off the commuter train and strain your eyes along the platform. At the very end, spot a small creature, mop of white hair, waving a balloon and a chocolate bar. He sees you in return, comes barreling towards you, arms outstretched, chocolate bar flailing. For children, reunions are simple, tangible, the hug comes easy. It's no more, no less than this moment. 

You sink back into your homeland, find your footing, hear your accent return, sleep like you never had trouble breathing. It feels complicated when you think about it. 

But maybe it's no more, no less, than moments stacked on each other. Maybe you're making mountains out of what could've just been 
a hug.  

Check In

One of the chickens disappears. Plucked – no pun intended – straight from the coop and vanished without a trace. Your nephews take it upon themselves to play detective, scouring the fields below with the kind of gusto only young sleuths could muster. 

You feel a sadness you don't currently have space for. 

A whole month passes, you do not write. There is no time – emotional or otherwise – in your schedule for efforts of such magnitude. You are tired. You are a wrung-out dish rag at the peak of summer, something doesn't add up. Your suitcase is a hundred pounds of expectations, plus a raincoat. The weather forecast changes by the day. Before you're back here, you'll have faced snow. Life is strange, and wondrous, and impossible all at once. This is the gift, when you remember to view it through that lens. 

Two days to departure. Everything is lighter 

after takeoff.  

Right

The desert doesn't linger, you are immediately thrust back into the world. Inspiration peters, the itch to always be writing is replaced with a to-do list. You founder in the questions. Outside the window, a minor squall whips itself across the valley, you commiserate with its dejected attitude. You're feeling something similar yourself. 

It's the knowing something is waiting in the wings that gets you. It's the impatient knockings of outside demands that drain the inspiration from your fingertips. You always were a sucker for a checked box. 

One thing at a time. The rain will pass, the sun return. One stumble does not make a fall.  

and Leaves

Another morning in the desert, I climb over the tortoise gate to the sandy path and run straight into one of the hard-shelled ancients, steady and still on the path. It does not care for my rush, sunny Sunday mornings are a day of rest for reptiles, like any other. You think you should take note, but where you come from, summers were not for resting, but for reviving, for returning to a life that had done nothing but rest all winter, had done nothing but lie in wait. 

The messages from across the ocean are clear: the first trembling days of summer are here, life is returning to their limbs, their hopeful hearts. It all begins now, and they don't want to miss a minute of it. 

In the 90-degree heat, in the scorching sunlight, in the towering awe of these red rocked mountains, I feel the same. Back at the house, a story waits patiently. You've lit the fire again, everything is buzzing. 

You know this is how it begins.  

Canyon

Early morning, the air is still but the bike paths and sidewalks already busy, everyone trying to get a moment in the sun before it turns into a swelter. You lace your shoes and turn up the canyon, legs aching to burn, lungs longing for the clarity that only comes at the end of a run. It's been decades, and you never tire of this feeling. Have found no drugs to beat the soar of this cleanse. 

The canyon is quiet as you enter, ancient cliffsides towering over you with little shade to offer. Lizards scurry where you run, the odd pedestrian offering a friendly hello but in your mind you are elsewhere. Last night, we climbed to the top of a petrified sand dune to watch the eons unfold beneath us, the awe of a million years like a comforting blanket around us as the sun set. On the page, a little girl discovers the magic of a new world and you think, that's exactly how it is. You feel again that responsibility to bring her into this one, to make something of all of these ideas. 

Remember again who you are
and what you came here to do.