4/4: I woke up today once before - power out, home buried under snow. A few hours later and the storm still fighting. The branches of the trees all facing the ground, backs hunched w/ ice and the world quiet again. The clock on the stove blinking the wrong time. Smoke alarms malfunctioning. The heat starting up again. I am lucky in this home, my god, grateful to be in this home. Spring surrendering its eager claim on the world and I am belly up in bed w/ the cats, one on each side.
Ice tickles the windows and the temperature drops. Surrender to a world of raw power. Every outlet in here is at or past capacity. On my first wake up, brain before body, I made a primitive list. Empty fridge, freezer, at least of meat and milk, and get it in the garage. Gas stove for eggs and toast and boiled water. Grounds in the French press. Still water for the cats. Collect candles and blankets.Â
I fell back asleep, sparing myself some time. It was a surprise to find lightning back in the walls when I awoke, nothing to contend w/ after all. How sleep is both avoidance and surrender. How I worry about anyone who sleeps too much, anyone who thinks they can live in dreams. How surrender always lay in the hands of time, uncertain and open, wide open sky and surprise. This morning, this morning, all my dreams w/ desire like a wild seed, a weed, all my actions born frenzied. I dreamt life was full of people who wanted to indulge me. And when I woke up, I was still warm on my back under linen and layered cotton, my small wild things soft and breathing slow at my sides.
Funny thing about surrender is that it feels almost like passivity in the body. Surrender, too, means fantasy or at least everything smells of fantasy to me lately, a thing free of control kept behind eyelids and buried at home in the root of us. Funny, to be a species that has to choose surrender, has to define it for ourselves, has to go piece by piece, part by part, like surrender is a balm or a sedative, like surrender is anything more than nakedness and trust, nakedness and trust.
Our nature, so self-protective and pink, born to try, born to overthink. Surrender, how I have come to know it, is not merely passive. Surrender is an open door. Passivity is a door on hinges, loose, careless of coming and going. Surrender, open, open. There is inherent loving awareness in surrender where passivity is an eye glazing over, distant and counting itself out, isolated.
Surrender is in tandem w/ the Earth - to time, to weather, to change, flowing into itself, constant constant. Passivity, it seems to me, is in contrast w/ time, pleading deniability of the natural order, uninvolved w/ the revolving, shifting planet we crawl all over. Perhaps these are merely distinctions I have made. It is difficult for me to reign in my judgment of passivity. It is easier, at first, to nail down what a thing is by establishing what it is not.
What is Surrender to you?
I am thinking about it. It’s about time. I am thinking about it because I wrote a letter to sighswoon about it, all messy this morning. Truth is, surrender is a newer practice for me - my tenuous relationship w/ trust, my conflicting relationship w/ control, the ways I am opening my eyes and palms and heart and hoping it holds. I hope to be held here, like I once believed and lost and picked back up again like a precious part of me.
I fear wasted time and a world growing colder, harsher, harder, a world uncaring. I fear love being drowned in pain. I fear sacrifice and naivety and my dreams left in fantasy. I fear my love is just a belief, a religion, my life meandering down its path regardless of what’s in my heart, leaving me simply to tell stories. Maybe or maybe not.
In this moment, my love outweighs my fear. My love wet and heavy on the branches of trees, curving them back down towards the Earth in a different kind of worship. In this moment, fear is only the sweat of me, keeping me cool and animal, flooding from Desire and drying in the folds of me, left in sheets I am grateful to fall back asleep in. See? The ways we tell stories.Â
I have seen lives lived through love and I have seen lives lived in fear. I have seen the chemistry of a life mutate, from solid to liquid (fear to love) and from love to fear (rain to ice). All gas in the end. In the end, our exhales hold the proof of us, involuntary release and lightning. I woke up to a house all dead in the snow and again, again, I woke up to a house of dreams in the cold. Everything is right where I left it last night and there is nothing to fear. I trust that the dark corners hide nothing I need to see. I trust the water in the pipes not to burst from the freeze. I trust the time held for me here w/ more than I need, even when lonely. This thing I do in surrender, let my heart fill all the space around me.
Who’s that knockin’ at my window? A tree of ice tap tappin’ for me to see. Right up to the glass, first in class, I see what the tree has to say. Says something like, Don’t you worry about me.
I ask the tree, heavy and tapping on my window, Do we surrender differently, you and me? A heavy wind blows and the tree shrugs, all frozen so nothing falls, says Depends on the ways you see. My palms are open like yours. If you came out here, you would look just like me.
Open palm to open palm through double-paned glass, I am safe while the tree shivers. We nod at each other. The tree laughs, gentle, says, No need for sympathy. You surrender on one side of the wall and I’ll surrender on the other.
We were teased w/ Spring, something from our memories, something from our dreams. I don’t need to tell the tree, born long before me. I nestle in close, do what I’m told. The trees in my yard rejoice in the storm. They breathe deep through resilience. They promise little white flowers by June and apples by August. I promise excitement and open palms, skin to skin when the storm ends.
A page I dog-eared from my Nightmares & Morning Pages series ~ thank you for reading