h(om)coming

my yin returned from India yesterday, smelling like Rishikesh and carrying fresh croissants and pain au chocolat from her layover in Paris. (je suis très heureux.) she had been in transit for 24 hours, gone for 3 weeks, and suffice to say it was a magnificent homecoming.

this is precisely the point, but its magnitude and dimension are beyond my present time restrictions. so, for the purposes of narrative clarity, i will confine my ramblings to the following three topics: vertigo, lingering and memory.

topic 1: vertigo

the night my yin returned we sat in bed and looked at a picture of her standing with her arms spread wide, waist-deep in the waters of the Ganges:

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when i saw this picture i experienced the strangest vertigo, as if i couldn't reconcile the image of the divine being in the photograph with the sight of the divine being directly beside me, with the sensation of the divine being in my arms.

image, sight, sensation – all three were there yet not there, and i really don't have the words to describe it except to say it was disorientingly powerful, not unlike the film of the same name:

Scottie, Madeleine, Carlotta. Carlotta, Madeleine, Scottie. Carlotta, Scottie, Madeleine. Scottie, Carlotta, Madeleine. Scottie, Madeleine, Carlotta. Carlotta, Madeleine, Scottie. Madeleine, Scottie, Carlotta. Scottie, Carlotta, Madeleine. Scottie, Madeleine, Carlotta. Madeleine, Carlotta, Scottie. Madeleine, Scottie, Carlotta. Scottie, Carlotta, Madeleine. Carlotta, Scottie, Madeleine. Madeleine, Carlotta, Scottie. Madeleine, Scottie, Carlotta. Carlotta, Madeleine, Scottie. Carlotta, Scottie, Madeleine. Madeleine, Carlotta, Scottie. Carlotta, Madeleine... Carlotta.

topic 2: lingering

my yin told me about coming out of the Ganges, how she dried herself on the riverbank overwhelmed with emotions. gradually they subsided, and she found herself wanting to linger, to hold on to what she had just experienced a little longer:

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it occurred to me that's what this journal is – what every journal is – in some way. these words are an attempt to hold on to these moments in life, to make sense, to create a narrative, to deny the fact that yesterday's homecoming is gone.

every word i write is a memorial to the past.

topic 3: memory

i can't help but feel something has shifted, and it's more than my joy or excitement or contentment regarding my yin's return. knowledge is moving from head to heart, and i'm starting to (non)grasp that each moment is held together not only by memory, but also by the very living-ness of our being:

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there is no need to pontificate lugubriously on the nature of the soul or the socio-historical construction of our identity. there is no need to become too fixed on form or contradiction, or thisness and suchness, or even the unspeakable beauty of the void. notice instead how it feels just to breathe in this one moment:

unburdened by the suicide that is the past.