In this Age of Corona, I’ve been enjoying the biography of Leonardo Da Vinci. Da Vinci’s, literal, undying attention to beauty through detail, reminds me of how much I enjoy writing, making me reflect on my own content and style.
During the renaissance period, writing was deeply beautiful. As much an art form as any other modality, it was honest in its description and feeling of all aspects of love. Expression through words, when delicately or harshly strung, is felt on impact and can leave tremors for as long as the words exist.
I started writing poetry at nine. It was my early lover, a place of refuge that widened with experience. My notebooks carry the brazen truth, the hopes and fears I was once afraid to share. Though I’ve continued to write, I feel something has been missing or, rather, hidden.
Remember when you fell in love, when breathing the same air as your beloved caused your cells to tingle and glow, when the thought of him or her brought a smile to your entire being?
Close your eyes for a moment and revive that sense of lightness you experienced when you loved because love was. It was that simple.
I wrote of love often, believing in and yearning for my singular soulmate, the one who’d connect with me through space and time, who I’d recognize in ancient and modern times, who I’d love eternally with gratefulness and grace. Over time, I worked diligently to convince myself that the fantasy was unrealistic, child-like, dead. So, I lowered the magical “some enchanted evening” belief, the notion that had me dreaming of him like a unicorn. I settled into a life without charm, venturing into a forest without trees, without protection from the harsh realities of the so-called real world.
I tested the waters and found them so severe, it seemed that my heart would never recover, scolded by false pretense. I metered my passion, a feat so difficult for me that it intruded and found its way out in other ways through separation and focus on the visible, the accoutrement that make us worthy. I became a consumer, my softness dissolving like smoke on the wind. I endured far too much time alone, missing, even, my own compassion.
I put myself aside, tossed like a porcelain doll under a lavender canopy, and focused my energies on others, on anything outside myself, so that I might lay my feelings there. The tears I shed for human tragedy disguised the tears of hopelessness I felt for my own life. My compassion for others grew exponentially while I numbed my expectations for personal satisfaction.
In the Age of Corona, as life reminds us of its fragility, we mourn the loss of connection.
I’ve mourned the same since text replaced conversation and social media replaced friendship. The death of romance, the breathing in of flowers, not symbols, of feeling hugs heart to heart that are impossible through virtual stream, are amplified. Today, proximity can literally take your breath away permanently.
In the dark recesses of my life, where there was no entry for others, I held onto a tiny light that’s yearning to flourish. I no longer feel foolish for believing, for my willingness to trust in and know love as universal matter. When I feel sunshine on my skin, hold a green leaf between my fingers, watch the scent of sage dissipate, the rise of rainbows in the sky, hug the ones I’m fortunate to touch, remember the great love of my life, I recognize that all I’ve ever wanted is to feel deeply and instill the freedom in others to do the same.
As we grieve, the inconceivable losses we’re experiencing today, we acknowledge that life has always been tenuous. It can be taken from us in any moment in a multitude of ways. Time has never been on our side. What we do, right now, in this moment, is all that matters.
On my end, I will create what I can to evoke waves of vibration, both euphoria and discomfort, to declare feeling as the precursor to shared pleasure. I will hold onto the belief in all the good we can do with our lives and in love as the sustenance of all creation.
Time is our opportunity to leave an eternal stamp. What indelible mark will you leave?