December 3 – Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).
I feel "most alive" most every day. A trusted professor/friend once said to us, "Life can't go boom every goddamned day!" I agree with him, but I also don't think feeling alive is all about the "booms." I'm certain you can feel "alive" every day, if only for a few moments. If we're defining alive not only as an exuberant whooping YES!!!NESS, but also as a calm savored swallowing of the joy at the back of one's throat. In fact, letting go of needing the "booms" (award, orgasm, whatever, product, product) is what can give us this alive feeling more often! And here I see a theme emerging in my recent blogging activity: process vs. product.
One process I've been engaged in this year is running, learning to run. On Thanksgiving Day, I went up to Boulder with my running mentor and before we cooked and feasted, we went for a bonafide trail run with two other, somewhat competitive runners. All runners were supportive of me, positive of my small step forward in my training and overall health. Every time I made it up what must have been a ludicrously small hill (to them), they cheered for me. They cheered, too, during the one downhill I did.
After the downhill, the other runners seemed impressed with my performance, calling me a veritable mountain goat. In fact, during it, one runner's voice, muffled by the intense crosswind, "wow, look at her take that hill!" I was honestly confused as to why she'd be so flattering. After all, I was only doing what came naturally, working with what was given, lightening my step even as gravity centered me, landing the solid pockets instead of the crumbly ones. Even as loose pebbles pressed at my soles, shifting where they should be solid, my feet seemed to know what to do. There they were, bounding and not caring, immersed in the insanity of being out there at all on such a cold day.
If only my mind could ever attain the perfect clarity of my feet that day, as they ignored my whining quads and wind-bitten cheeks, in total obeisance to their one and only gravity-influenced charge: move! Move NOW or fall! I remember such exhilaration as I picked my way down that hill. Such YES!!!NESS.
The moment I want to tell you about isn't that one, though.
It's this one: at the bottom of the hill, leaving all that behind me, the rest of the run just beginning to go on.
To feel "most alive", one must first live.
ReplyDeleteYou, my darling, live.
glad i live on the same family tree as you, dear cousin!
ReplyDelete