I am writing you from my grandma’s back porch.
I leave in 4 days and I am sick with the flu.
It’s so quiet here. The wind comes in waves, gentle waves. There are a few crows that make me feel for a fleeting moment like I’m in Sleeping Beauty’s story. There’s a willow tree without it’s leaves. I can almost imagine it in full bloom and it feels magical to me, even without the leaves. The sun is the perfect warmth and as I sit here I think about how there really isn’t much more I want in this world than to be in the quiet, still sun.
The air is expansive — it’s one thing I love about Texas and something I know I’ll miss. I try to imagine the sounds in Bali, how I will feel sitting in the still sun there. What will linger in the air?
The dichotomy is I am overwhelmed with all I want to do.
To write and design and build and give. Little waves hit me as I imagine going back to school for architecture, directing a movie, running a hotel, building homes, adopting babies, writing books — contributing to something beyond me.
I could do anything. I feel the capacity in me. I imagine my life and all the people I could be, like characters out of a book. I want to be all of them. I want to jump full force into all of them all at once. I feel as though I could do it all, but I also know I have this one life and that makes me feel sad and sobered by what I give myself to.
I want to start now.
So I am, in some way, starting with this letter — sharing what’s on my mind. What I see. What I feel —because it feels significant, this thing in me that doesn’t quite make sense to people. It doesn’t make sense to me either. Why I do what I do and go where I go.
But when I listen and follow, and allow this thing to exist unfiltered — all is right and real and I just wish the rest of the world didn’t seem to fight against it so.
The leaf-blowers are out next door. Airplanes pilling by here and there. Can’t we just let the grass be? Let the world, our bodies rest a while? It feels personal when I know it’s not. It seems anywhere I go there will be bustle of machines.
So I treasure these quiet pockets while they last. Soak in all the light and love and hope of possibilities while I can. Recognize how limited I am by this little body and hopefully, humbly, submit it to a God far more connected and powerful than I.