Wednesday, July 1, 2009

A Life Unfurls

Well little baby girl, you’ll unfurl into an old woman someday.

If there’s one thing I can promise it’s that the Earth will be impatient with you.

It’ll either try to spin you off or spin you right back in.

It’s going to hurt a whole lot to be here.

And sometimes the beauty of it will cause oceans to form in your eyes.

You’ll notice that as your life peels its petals open, other lives around you will pop off the stem, or get eaten with a wet swallow, but don’t be alarmed, that’s one of the most important parts.

You’re going to taste amazing things down here on Planet Earth, and suddenly you will possess preferences, favorite things and places, pet peeves and character flaws.

Maybe someone will damage you real bad.

Maybe someone will be brave enough to teach you that anything is possible.

Hopefully your habits will be positive ones, and benefit you, but if you’re anything like the rest of us they may only drive you further from yourself.

Get ready for feelings of inadequacy and lots of complicated relationships, a to-do list that truly has no end.

Maybe we spin our own selves back into the Earth with all of this stress.

But you also must be ready to feel such tremendous love that it corrupts your better judgment and gives your heart hummingbird wings.

And to dance like your socks are made of music.

Oh, and you also get to enjoy the oceans, and that big blushing blue moon, and springtime and honey and catching salamanders.

It’s a good place to be. I think you’ll like it here.

But get ready, because before you know it you’ll be an old woman, and I’ll be so long gone you might have trouble believing I was ever actually here.

But here I was, convinced that my own life held importance, chock-full of bad habits as it was.

Here I was, eating delicious foods, dancing from time to time, scratching things off the old to-do list in a field of blue moonlight, and talking the ears off of language-less babies.

Here I was.

And here you still are.

The Earth will never stop spinning you round and round, but all your life demands of you is to always notice, and your world will be as full as a watermelon and sweeter than syrup.

June 2009
Lagunitas, CA

1 comment:

  1. sammy, somehow i missed this one and find it on a quiet autumn morning in the hills of California, while you tromp around Bali, ecstatic that the Giants are doing to well. All I can think is, glad we get to bump our soft animal heads against each other from time to time on this little great big adventure. Your kids are really gonna like my kids.

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