Dark Day Full of Sunshine

This dark day full of sunshine sucks sweaty gorilla balls.

Last night it stormed. The sound of the sky cracking open and spilling wet rain was the soundtrack for my dreaming.  3 broken cell phones, marijuana shaped like marbles stuffed in my right pocket, libraries with too much security, boys gracefully riding bikes on the backs of blow up rafts being tossed like toys around the ocean,  getting on the last bus going to San Francisco, fittings for a super-hero suit, J with a straw in the side of his head draining rust colored fluid, he is unable to communicate because his brain is being emptied of some exotic poison, so I just watch and wait….and then I leave, unable to withstand the one sided nature of our conversations.

 I woke up hoping that today the weather would match my mood,  that the soundtrack of my dreams would play throughout the day.  I’m stormy and dark.  I’ve decided to commit to a decision I’ve been trying to make for months, no matter how much pain I must endure, its for the best, and my job is to take exquisite care of myself and weather the inevitable storms of despair. Sometimes doing the healthy thing is excruciating, that’s why it can take a really long time to let go of something that no longer serves us, because I suppose, the holding on is serving the part that doesn’t want to suffer in this particular way. The way of letting go. Again with the work of letting go, this life is one big letting go. It’s much more comfortable to surrender to the storms of despair during a wicked monsoon, damn it.  But it’s like this in summer,  the storms move fast. I’m disappointed, and again, as always during summer, pissed off at the audacity of sunshine. The big hot ball is always so greedy and hungry to swallow beautiful dark storms and own the sky. Interminable heat and brightness. Fuck you, sunshine.

 I’ve decided to ignore the day, I’ll show you sunshine!  I’ll just hide in the cool darkness of my cottage. For a while, this  brings some peace.  I bury my nose in Hemingway, I am studying his craft, not trying to get to the end. I take my time, using the thick glossary in the back,  discovering the Spanish word for the lump of muscle that erupts from the neck of a fighting bull when it is angry, morillo.  Miraculously, I feel like I’ve been allowed to slip out of my mind, and into the mind of this so-called great. I stop and take a moment to feel the ballooning of my heart, full of thanks for having a friend who knows me well enough, knows writing well enough, and knows himself well enough..to walk me through the point of carefully and wholeheartedly reading something you don’t want to read.  I’m pulled away from my new-found friendliness towards EH by my grumbling belly and the memory of being carried up a hill on J’s back in the freezing rain…..

I eat a brown rice cake I frosted with almond butter, drizzled with agave nectar, and sprinkled with cayenne pepper and sesame seeds, it’s weight serves to settle me down some, dulls the sharp emotional memories, and quiets me enough to feel a smile spread across my munching mouth,  corners turning up at the birds outside singing their happy sunshine song. I decide that I enjoy bird songs so very much because we are vibrating on the same wavelength….I’ve never heard a bird song that doesn’t snap me out of whatever inner obsessing I’m investing my awareness in. Whit wheat, tweet tweet. Just for a few moments I forget that I would be  absolutely content if  the sky was heavy with black clouds dumping buckets of  gods tears on every inch of everything, because for those few tweet moments I already am.

I snap out of my contentedness just in time to talk myself out of yoga and into a nap. What would happen if I just took the day off from living?  No one would care if I just took a rain check on life , today no one would notice. No one is counting on me to show up for anything, is it possible to stay in bed all day with Hemingway and my red notebook, drifting in and out of dream filled sleep? I decide to give it a shot, because I’m convinced that the sunshine and  penetrating heat will only exacerbate my delicate suffering.  Just as I’m starting to doze, I’m pulled out of bed and am slipping my legs through stretchy black pants, pulling on a blue halter, rolling up my Manduka, and sticking my feet in ageless black Teva flip-flops,  because apparently, to yoga I am going. It wasn’t a conscious choice, I was tricked by some reverse aspect of my psyche…or something like that.

It’s hot outside, but I am delighted to discover that last nights rain cleansed my little car of the dirt coat that it was forced to wear after Tuesday’s haboob. I refuse to wash my car during monsoon season, because monsoon season washes my car. I’m aware of being half alive as I’m driving my car,  thinking it may not be safe to be driving, I wonder if  I’m sleep driving? 

Once safely on my mat, I drop into my practice…it’s deep and quieting, and I’m only 25 percent annoyed that K is blasting hiphop music full of  inane lyrics and music vibrating out of  synch with my wavelength….its a much shorter wave than that of bird songs and Kate’s song. It barely matters that she is practically screaming out confusing cues, because I am just my breath and my body, which has surprisingly shown up strong and full of sunny energy. I toss some tears on my mat, it’s my way, it’s my emotional detox, it’s my gift to emote and surrender at regular intervals.

I’m just so fucking lucky to be able to feel, feel, feel……each slight shift within myself and outside of myself, every  pull….every push….and not react as much as I might…I want to take drugs sometimes to temper my feeling, but that too has been decided for me, the answer is NO.  Sure, I sit here with a  half eaten blueberry scone as my companion, but that’s just  sweet compassion, a little bump of serotonin.  Sleeping the day away would have been fine too,  as would the easy distraction and attention of another man,  instead I’m sitting here writing this on a dark day full of sunshine, quite surprised at the deep peace and awareness I’m witnessing as the truest part of who I am in this moment. Dark and light, showing up all at once.  I think I’ll take my peaceful ass up a mountain…..