In those days, it was the permanence of the thing that gave me pause. To mark this body, for all time - too great a commitment to inflict on my future self. Even in my teens and 20s, I had the foresight to understand that I would change and grow, that I might come to regret earlier decisions. It took until my 30s to understand that this body is, in fact, anything but permanent. It is fragile, ephemeral, fleeting, and all time is no time at all.
I have lived in so many places over the years - Los Angeles, Orange County, rural Massachusetts, Bangladesh, New York, Baltimore, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Long Beach, New Haven, Newfoundland. All of which have shaped me, none where I felt I could be fully myself, some which have stifled me more than others. I have been obsessed with the search for home for nearly 20 years, hoping each next place would be the last true one. Why did I never understand that I was living in it all along?
This flesh, these bones, this racing heart, these aching hands. I have been home all along. I am quite done with letting my surroundings tell me what I can and cannot be. I feel caught by an exuberant clarity right now. This body, it is meant to be lived in, used, celebrated. This is my body, which has borne incredible pain, and pleasure. This is my body, which has began to falter in the last decade in ways medicine cannot parse. This body is mine, and what I do to it, and with it, is for no one else. So while I have the pleasure of it, let it be all of me. All of what I have been and will be. Until I return to the earth.
So let’s start with a scrolling on social impulse decision. A phone made of a banana? Tomorrow, you say? Let’s fucking do this.
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