Entry 76
Star jasmine, roses and lilies, shedding, forgetting to breathe
Forgetting to breathe. Cheeks taut, inwardly shrinking into themselves due to some internal strain or the speed of life, which I begin to notice just as I realize that my inhale isn’t going anywhere and contains very little oxygen, not as much as I need, I’m not really breathing, and I wonder how long this has been going on, how long I’ve been depriving myself of air. This day came to me from all sides, some of it with brightness, bringing parts of myself from the past back into focus. Midday I sat in a Vietnamese bakery with a Thai beverage in front of a stranger whose coldness I was working to defrost and realized I don’t always have the energy for such maneuvers. Today, I hardly did, but I believe I successfully dismantled the defenses nevertheless. I perceived what I was able. I made my observations. Then I returned to the day’s heat. I can’t remember if I’d stopped breathing just yet. My apartment was inordinately overheated; I’d forgotten to turn on the AC before I left, and my cat lay sprawled across the sofa, glancing over at me as I entered the front door and didn’t move an inch when I dropped my keys on the floor as I scrambled to remedy my mistake. The day we moved in, my cat and I, it was 107 degrees Fahrenheit and no one had been in the space for several days. It smelled of paint. The windows were sealed upon themselves. I remember using a silver-plated butter knife to pry them open. Recalling this, today was nothing. It only smelled faintly of palo santo and white sage, and the jasmine and lilies from my perfume. The ceiling fans working, the AC finally on, I took one hour-long sweat-fueled phone call, and another after that, and another after that, and one more after that (only now realizing just how many) then - I think that’s when I noticed I’d stopped remembering to breathe.
On my porch, the star jasmine is coming to life, three little white flowers have finally appeared. Inside, the roses in the blue vase have already dried, it was too hot for them to last, but they’ll be replaced very soon by something much more vital to my happiness. Something even more beautiful than a rose. My superstitious nature is preventing me from throwing them out until they have been thus replaced, and I’m allowing myself to believe in the proper timing of a symbolic shedding of anything left that’s lacking life, anything left that’s not helping me breathe any deeper, and maybe it will be another twenty four hours before I finally do get the air I need. In the meantime, I could also use a glass of water.
Life is a long and drawn out affair full of problems you never solve, but that’s sort of the point, I believe, and the inevitable moves we make in attempts to “solve” ourselves bring us further inward, and deeper down, where I think we find much more than just ourselves, and life’s other half; life’s soulmate