A walk in a park
I took a walk tonight in a park. It shook me. Sometimes I think I’m built different. Emotions feel like living beings to me — familiar, dear, and messy friends. Do you know what I mean when I say “a summer evening breeze that can make you weep?” If not, I hope you do someday. I feel that tonight. I think I feel alive.
I’m not convinced I actually want to feel “happy.” I think I just want to feel alive. Like sitting on the porch as a storm rolls in alive — what Simon and Garfunkel call “the joy and frustration of being caught by a drop of cold rain” alive. Walking in the middle of the woods with no one else around alive. Fresh baked bread alive. Three hour conversations around a campfire alive. Warm butternut squash soup on a cold day (with feta on top) alive. Slightly tipsy hanging out with bosom friends alive. Driving with your windows down blasting the same song for 30 minutes straight alive. Pushing past small talk to share real life shit alive. Awkwardly taking off your clothes in front of someone for the first time alive. Shitty singing at 2am in a karaoke bar alive. That first kiss with someone new alive. The 1,000th kiss with someone who knows you and chooses to stay alive. 3 beers and 2 shots in dancing at a gay bar in Boise, Idaho alive. A friend canceling on you so they can get laid alive. Knowing you can tell a person anything and they will still hug you alive.
People walk past me. I think they also want to be alive . . . want to FEEL alive.
“She’s not even reached out.”
“Do you need to go potty”
“This stick is a bow and arrow”
“I’m not practicing as much as I need to, but anyway . . .”
“The girls can drive one of their vehicles if they want to”
“That’s not really what I care about you know . . . so there’s definitely a mix”
“Well, it is nice . . . and her dog’s dying. Yeah. So, I’m going to see if she can come over for a wine Wednesday”
God . . . we’re all fucking pointless and devastatingly beautiful — stubbornly existing and throwing ourselves again and again at the world until one of us breaks.
How much salt do you think the ground can hold? How many eons of evaporated tears before the soil’s too bitter to bear food? How much spilled blood before it starts pooling in bogs? How many families ripped apart before the world bursts at the seams? How many nights holding another human close before it begins knitting itself back together again?
Tomorrow, I might feel nothing. But, tonight. Tonight in this park, I think I feel alive. And that’s something.