When you think of hospitality, who does that include?
We make space for strangers on the street. We make space for people in our homes. But what’s our inner hospitality like?
I’d hate to live an entire life and never come home.
I am fairly confident that adult life isn’t as much a creation as a perpetual homecoming.
This is the active practice of memory.
You can go out. But you need to come back.
Homecoming on the Dead of the Dead in Iquitos
I washed the dishes and my hair last night, and I couldn't help but notice the small, cleaned parts of my life now punctuating my apartment.
I intentionally left my door open this morning to say hello to my neighbors.
The refrigerator will get cleaned this week. Maybe not by me, but it will happen. My shoes are somewhat placed on the shoe rack. The plants in my apartment are still alive. I compost every week.
I made a series of small drawings this week, and now they fill my notebook. I cleaned the space around the melting bar of soap.
The bag of 160 black tea bags I bought in July wasn't too much or too expensive. It was the right amount.
The washing machine might now finally be fixed after the fifth attempt because I called the repair guy again.
The tea bags will run out in February.
Behind the scenes
Striking a chord is easy when you’re ready to grab the mallet for the xylophone.
It can also be easier than that.
In fact, you didn’t grab anything.
The chord got struck, yes. Yes, it rang through each scale of your afternoon. Then that chord connected with another chord. A handful of days later, another chord followed until there was a string of autonomous yet congruent sounds. It’s the music from nowhere.
You would love to take credit. But you never picked up the mallet. You didn’t exercise your endlessly imagined will. It’s because it comes into itself, exists for itself. The music comes from wherever it wants and enters your life.
You find that the top of the tea spins like a galaxy, whether or not you tried.
Your life isn’t about how it’s constructed. It’s about how it’s also allowed to live itself.
Your gift to your own life is to take a more comfortable seat on the couch and notice how it spins.
