True Love and the Patience of the Sea

Tonight is clean floors and incense; warm lights and propped up legs.  A solo night in to prepare for this weekend and to learn from people who aren't me via books, comedy, and podcasts.

I just finished listening to What's the Tee Episode 161 : Falling Asleep in the Poppies, and was quite moved by it.

Let me tell you why and why I truly love the fact that Michele and Ru do this podcast.  One of the things I appreciate about Ru is that he is very forthright and honest about his struggles with depression.  He talks a lot about how creative people, who are sensitive to the world around them in a way people who are less creative may not be, are both able to see the magic in the world but also feel and are tempted by the darkness within it.

In this episode, an episode that went very deep in a way it doesn't usually, Michele reveals that she has recently found out that her first boyfriend (who she was with for about 4 years), has killed himself.  From that point, they discuss suicide, depression, creativity, survivors of suicide (parents and kids) and a number of other things.  The title of the episode comes from one of Ru's favorite scenes in The Wizard of Oz that, for him, speaks to the mirage that is life and what people can fall danger to if they are unable to hold on to the fact that it is a mirage.

Of course it made me think both of Travis, who died by suicide, and of R who taught me a lot about being a survivor of suicide.

I just appreciate and love that Ru and Michelle put this out there. For themselves, for each other, for the queer babies out there, for me, for the artists, for everyone. I don't know if there's an episode I listen to of theirs that I don't laugh or tear up to, but this one was one of the more important ones, without question.  Give it a listen if you get the chance.

(pause)

Meanwhile, I'm thinking a lot about last night.  Thinking about how much I love people and their stripes of humor, thinking about the tenderness of the new intersection of lives, thinking about how many perspectives are out there in the world.

Last night I went to see an exhibit I've wanted to see for a while now with a person whose mind (and eyebrow gestures) I admire. Something I enjoyed was when he talked about how reading excites him because it causes him to imagine and experience worlds that he would have never imagined, and how it relates to his relationship to spices and cooking and coming up with tastes that were previously unimagined.  Art, indeed, is everywhere.

Things are good, golden, sad, shining, and elated - all at once.  But most importantly, they are blooming, piece by piece, and peace by peace, with a recognition of one's ability to impact another human in their life, and with all of the space in the world for my feelings to exist and be loved.

It is somehow so fitting that a bit over a week ago, on Thursday morning, I woke up to a single, white flower just starting to bloom on a plant I didn't even know flowered (I've had it for about a year). And equally fitting that, this morning, I woke up to a second flower appear out of nowhere a few inches from the first.

Growth and spirit. Separate and together. 



Special shout out, once again, to Casey who has taught me more about the ability to and the depth of love than I could have ever imagined.  I don't know if I'll ever completely comprehend the amount of alignment that happened for us to have met so long ago and to have grown with each other so much. And all while bantering about everything from corsets and the difficulty of lining a jacket, to what it means to be so easy to care about.

We are.

So are you.



Be well; be loved,

k.

(image via art propelled tumblr)