It’s been kind of a rough week.
No, I’m not being ironic.
Firstly, if things had gone as planned, I’d be in Barcelona right now. Probably asleep, since it would be past midnight and I’d be jetlagged to shit, but still.
Secondly, my adventures stateside have had a few hiccups lately. I went to St. Augustine last weekend to check in on my mother and got real graceful after downing half a bottle of champagne and fell off their back porch.
I mean, I really went and did it. Instant nausea and I went pale, just like the one time I broke a bone. I spent sunny Saturday morning in the emergency care center, waiting three hours for the doctor to order an old-school, smells-like-darkroom-chemicals-in-here xray and tell me, “Yep, it’s a bad sprain.”
Then, I limped around downtown in a brace. Charming.
But nevertheless, at this end of the week, I’m doing okay. It’s jasmine time, my favorite, and my morning walks to work, although slower, are filled with that butterflower scent. My workouts have had to shift (arm day everyday!) and progress more slowly. I have to take my time with stairs.
It’s been making me think.
I’ve rushed through a lot in my life. Big decisions, small ones. Relationships, moves. All everyday actions are to be completed in the shortest time frame possible while maintaining their integrity. And sometimes at the expense of it. Please see my handwriting.
But as I’ve gotten older, its become easier — or at least possible — to slow down. And it’s important to, I think.
The other day I watched the gulf come up over the buildings as I came down the causeway onto the barrier island where the best beaches are in St. Pete. It’s always one of my favorite views — all that blue coming up over our manmade structures, dwarfing them. The edge of a civilization.
But I remembered the overwhelming wave of relief and awe that view had inspired in me just a few months ago, when I was fresh out of Ohio and craving saltwater so hard I could barely speak without crying. Watching that ocean filter into view had been like coming home. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was.
And now, it was somewhere I’d decided casually to visit on a random Tuesday after work to see the sunset. I brought out my towel and read a little bit, and bailed slightly before the sun actually hit the horizon because I was too hungry and it was chilly in the wind.
What is it about proximity and familiarity that makes you take things for granted?
It happens no matter where or what it is, and it’s so easy to get seduced into the idea that the next thing, the next place, the next people will be better, better, better than here. And you go and maybe they even are for a second, and then life fills the room back up and it’s just you getting by, being where you are.
And maybe it’s just me. I mean, I did transfer four times in college. And I’ve moved… what, ten times in the eight years since I turned eighteen? I romanticize the unknown and then get tired of it once I achieve it. Hell, I’m watching myself fall into the same pattern right now, hatching plans to move to New York or Europe sometime in the next decade, imagining some life there that’ll be more sophisticated, more together, more refined, more perfect.
Life is never any of those things for very long at a stretch. No matter where or who you are.
When my ankle went out, I was honestly pissed enough to cry. I did cry. I had just started swing dance lessons the week before, and not only was it fun, the people were great — and I’ve had trouble finding many friends outside of work down here. I felt like I was finding a way for myself. And although it’s not long-term, the pain and lack of mobility in my left leg rendered walking normally impossible, let alone dancing.
I felt… grounded.
But now that I’ve slowing down — even if only because I was forced — I’m seeing how nourishing it can be to allow for more wiggle room, more space in our lives. To really look at things. It’s easier to appreciate them, to feel every hour. To take less for granted.
While I was trying to find parking on the beach, I ended up taking a detour to avoid the construction that was — you guessed it — slowing down traffic. Annoyed (see how much I needed all this?), I crawled my car along a residential alley. There was a beautiful, huge home for sale — two stories, built up on stilts. It had a little sign in the open space underneath where the stairs were, next to a hose: RINSE FEET HERE.
Those big empty houses on the beach — they were, are, someone’s dream.
But even if you save up all the money and call the realtor and buy the damn thing, it’s still just a big empty beach house with skylit windows. No matter how lovely it is, everything grows stale if you can’t bring your own wholeness to it. It’s an inside-you thing.
And slowing down is, I think, imperative to the cultivation of that… mindfulness, serenity, whatever it is.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m pretty pumped to get back to dancing.
But it’s been a nice reprieve.