The Days Speaks

Days speak for themselves. You don't need to tell them what to say or force them into a costume.

I am amazed at what kind of truly meaningful life is not enacted by the will. A life based on attunement. Realizing that we don't need to brace against ourselves or our days.

I feel like I've lost too much energy and time in my life for the sake of trying to optimize things.

An essential skill I’m developing: starting off a day by listening to it. Of seeing what's already happening inside our guts, our subconscious, and our souls before we attempt to exert a will over the elephant.

What does this day want?

On a photo-taking expedition of Iquitos-via-river

You didn't get what you wanted in the way you wanted it.

You didn't get what you wanted in the way you wanted it.

Adult grief is more nuanced than I realized. Kinder, sometimes.

Aging feels like standing in an open frame with wind coming through. Mostly soft. Sharp when something shifts.

There can be tantrums or less buried in the move from child to adult—the moment one possibility closes and another opens and you realize what was is gone. There is also a real loss, even a small one. What you wanted and didn't get still matters.

You can grieve futures that will never exist because your life changed.

You can grieve what you had to let go of when you learned something new.

You can grieve that you're human and the landscape shifts like geology—slow, then sudden.

I feel sad that streets change when I look at them. I even grieve feeling better instead of worse, because what we had mattered too.

You can grieve wanting something. That matters. Emotions don't dissolve just because you refuse to name them.

One thing happened.

It's not what you wanted.

Synesthetic grief

Polar Bear Water

I’ve drawn images that expressed my subconscious, pure and rea,l months before I had any idea what I was doing. Color, intensity, texture, emotion—all there. All unclear to me.

Pure thinking wears you out. Your conscious mind can feel like a head without a body—and it doesn’t know nearly as much as it thinks because knowing is a smaller part of the equation than we’d like to admit.

The real wisdom lies below the surface, inside the cold waters beneath the polar bears.

Your body knows things before your brain does. Your feelings speak languages more precise than thought. My hands understood what my mind couldn’t name yet.

These aren’t vague instincts. They are information. Your gut, your skin, your throat—they’re processing the world constantly, sending signals your consciousness hasn’t caught up to.

We spend so much energy living only in our heads. What else is going on?