Heart space

It is not the finality
of love
that swells inside
of you,
suffocating your heart---

it is
the intoxicating realization
of the capacity of your heart
to feel.


......

Its over, the grand French adventure. And my heart is caught up in my esophagus and sometimes I can barely breathe--either for not wanting it to have ended, to be back there with it lasting and lasting.... or realizing all that it has been and steeping in that.

To be honest with you, I have hardly been steeping. Its more like wallowing. Wallowing and missing and longing for, mourning even. Yet France hasn't died. Nor has the me that was there. So what am I mourning?

The only answer I have to that is space.

I did not go to do anything other than write while pantsless and smoking cigarettes. You know this. There were no grand intentions beyond eating, beyond experience, beyond adventure, beyond opportunity; I wouldn't have gone if it wasn't for D and R creating the space for me to join them. Long story short, I didn't go to do anything but go.

But it turned into a much longer story than that.

It turned into creating a space for exactly the experience, adventure, opportunities to grow and learn and simply be that I could not have done otherwise. Without a prerogative I was able to be the most present and most grounded I have ever felt in all of my evers. I learned, really learned the power of time, and how to play within its constraints, finding meaning in the playfulness and productivity in the least serious of intentions. I trusted myself to know everything and nothing at all. There, in Marseille, I was steeping: in my values, my questions, my learned answers, my desires, my I- don't- give- a- fuck-ed-ness and my I- care- too- god- damn- much-ed-ness, this rich brew of reactions and thoughtful responses, of learned behaviours being unlearned all on their own. Being in so much space, free from agendas, indebted relationships, nexts and laters, left only time for now; a spaciousness that allowed me to be in a constant moving meditation that now has me remarkably still in trying to, adversely, steep myself within it--absorb it all.

ooh la la. The story continues, and I continue to give myself space for it.

Your turn to be honest with you: when have you given yourself the space you need? Space to absorb your reactions, your questions, the answers you receive, your impulses, your deepest desires, your fears, what attracts you, deters you, and what leaves you apathetic. When was the last time you allowed your mind to clear in a way that creates enough space to truly see outside of your own perspective? In this space seeing, hearing, listening, and when the time is right or you feel so empassioned, speaking to all of the energies inevitably sharing in your space. When did you last feel fully present? Take your time; think about it....

....

It was the last time you loved a little deeper, a little more intimately, much more fearlessly.

It was a moment when you stopped trying so hard; when you chose not to suffer through or force something that was showing up so wrongly in your body and mind and shifted yourself energetically to soften into what was more true for you.

When you let something have you. Let yourself be swept up and cast into a dizzying vortex of maybes. When you let yourself and your agenda rest in hammock like surrender to possibility.

When you didn't know. When you had no fucking clue. And you loved it.

Whew. Honesty--right?

What I have gotten most out of my time in Marseille is how integral it is to be honest with what you are doing with your precious time here. Is what you are doing making you happy? Someone else? Something greater? Don't do something simply to suffer through, pay your dues, get to the next bit. We don't get to something great by suffering, we get there by loving the work we are doing and creating the space for ourselves to do it. Creating room for all that we experience to percolate, to steep so that we are not left mourning what could have been.

So I am not mourning, I actually am steeping. Allowing all of that permeable space to be saturated with the experiences I may not have intended to have but am more full for having them, and taking them with me into this next space of here and now. A learned behaviour of gifting myself whatever space is needed to remain clear and grounded, happily human.

Just as I am thinking that that trip was not long enough, I know just how god damn much it has been. So much more than just time. So much more than can be allotted to any amount of tangible space, for the space to intimately connect with who you are on a cellular level exists within the limitless capacity of your heart. We have all of the space we need.