There's nothing left to do in paradise but look around
the world of our bodies & memory in sensation
The sun begins to linger in the late afternoons of May.
There is something in that light; a weight that sits heavy in my chest like a memory. The sun lingers and all of a sudden there is a day where the air finds its first euphoric warmth after the chill of winter and the gusty winds of early spring swirl off to oblivion. The balmy breeze meets my skin, a sign that freedom is near. I remember deserts, the Santa Ana winds of my youth, slip n’ slides, road trips, sunburns, the smell of sunscreen. I remember sunsets without jackets, rivers, oceans, mosquitos.
I've opened my windows for the first time of the season, and they will stay open for months. The green earthy smell of 100’s of miles of Redwood forests and wildflowers cooking in the sun billows in and is followed by every warm memory associated with its fragrance; all my passings-through of this town I now call home. I am realizing there is much more that lied dormant during my first winter here in the PNW.
All these moments, like seeds, blossoming under the warmth and light of sensation. My body, a landscape, carries the story. This world of sensation is so uniquely mine through the memories I make in the heat, in the water, in the smells of spring, in the smoke of a cigarette, in the juice of a peach, in the glow of a lingering sun. To be receptive to these sensations, to walk through this world inside out, allows our bodies to feel our story and make associations that allow us to honor our past selves, and to embody our whole life at once rather than wander as an isolated dot on the continuum.
It’s another way to say nostalgia. That when our 5 senses align in the perfect way we can unlock and embody our memories. The memories we thought were slipping through our fingers were only slipping into the deepest recesses of our bodies, waiting for the smell of freshly mowed grass and wet asphalt to stir them from their sleep.
In this vein I have been reminding myself to feed my body the world and stay present.
Lately, my creative energy has slumped into mere embers. The hustle of college drained me more than I’d like to admit. I’ve been less in my mind and reconnecting more with my body.
I’ve been going on strolls. Around the neighborhood, through the forest, down the beach. I leave my notebook at home and let my body tune in. To the smell of laundry and wood-burning fireplace lofting out of people’s homes, to the feeling of wet forest floor on my bare feet, to the sight of a tide pool’s intricacies. All these things I historically would feel the need to do something about. Write about them, draw them, think about them. After being on a carousel of homework/school/job/friends/parties, I’m letting my body do what it does best — feel. I’m simply giving the world my attention in exchange for the gift of its experience. There’s nothing left to do in paradise but look around.
I find that this presence brings me home. Not only to the moment around me, but to myself. All the times I’ve chosen to be present in my life collect in my body like a museum where I can be a nostalgic sap and reconnect with all the memories and sensations that make my life mine. The sound of a mourning dove portals me to my childhood, calling up to them in the trees in my backyard. It portals me to a property deep in Joshua Tree during my youth on the road, sitting in a pool someone built into big ancient boulders, surprised that the call had followed me to the desert. It portals me to the property I lived in quite recently, deep in a Santa Lucian valley, listening to their song penetrate the pastoral silence while I eat breakfast in the field. It takes me to all these places and the context of feelings associated with their time.
This body remembers everything I’ve ever felt even when my mind can’t. It’s beautiful, amazing, and I’m still trying to understand how to put it into words. I actually have no idea if any of this makes sense but I at least know that Marcel Proust knows what I’m talking about:
“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.” - Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
I’ve written some poems about these feelings below the paywall, one of them never before seen the light of day, and the other a shameless fan favorite when I perform it live. It’s a feeling I feel more confident expressing through a poem. They’re a treat for my paid subscribers. xoxo
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