Little by little, and also by great leaps.

Trying to settle back in to life in NYC after a month away is like trying to do yoga on the branch of a very tall and wobbly tree, while its hailing toxic shit from the sky and an army of people are trying to ax down the tree from the ground, one annoying blow after another. You are hyper aware of the potential for danger and disaster, it's almost impossible to get into the flow because there is so much distraction, and it is very, very hard to find your balance.

Over the past week, however, I stumbled upon two things that have actually done wonders to ease my mind, and make my subway rides far less anxiety inducing. The first is the Irish folk group Lunasa, whose sound is both soothing and exhilarating, particularly in this song, Morning Nightcap:


The second thing is the poem below, by Pablo Neruda. It strikes such a chord with me in this moment, and I could read over and over and over and over.


October Fullness

Little by little, and also by great leaps
life happened to me, and how insignificant this business is.
These veins carried my blood, which I scarcely ever saw,
I breathed the air of so many places without keeping a sample of any.
In the end, everyone is aware of this:
nobody keeps any if what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bonse.
The best thing was learning not to have too much either of sorrow or of joy, to hope for the chance of a last drop, to ask more from honey and twilight.

Perhaps it was my punishment, perhaps I was condemned to by happy. Let it be known that nobody crossed my path without sharing my being. I plunged up to the neck into adversities that were not mine, into all the sufferings of others.
It wasn't a questions of applause or profit.
Much less. It was not being able to live or breathe in this shadow, the shadow of others like towers, like bitter trees that bury you, like cobblestones on the knees.

Our own wounds heal with weeping, our own wounds heal with singing.
but in our doorway lie bleeding widows, Indians, poor men, fishermen.
The miner's child doesn't know his father amidst all that suffering.

So be it, but my business was the fullness of the spirit: a cry of pleasure choking you, a sigh form an uprooted plant, the sum of all action.
It pleased me to grow with the morning, to bathe in the sun, in the great joy of sun, salt, sea-light and waves, and in that unwinding of the foam, my heart began to move, growing in that essential spasm, and dying away as it seeped into the sand.

-Pablo Neruda