I do my best meditation in the hours between when it is very late and when it is very early, just at the edges of dawn.
Likewise, my favorite version of the beach house is at the moment where the sun is turning the horizon dusky rose and stonewashed denim, and the sea is a glittering sapphire. When the day is still just a hopeful promise.
I’ve been meditating with purpose for seventeen years, so landscapes roll out for me without trouble. I remember the days when just trying to keep things stable was an almost impossible task, when the ground would dissolve under me, when everything would go dark or tinny, like it was painted over with sloppy watercolors. Everything slightly metallic, the shades of dreams and nightmares.
Hearing [redacted] speak took six months of work, or maybe more, and it never really clicked in until he and I started sleeping together. I’ve also been thinking about the years when everyone was talking to me- how much work it was to discern between each individual voice… and also my own inner voice… and also, the Voice of the Universe.
Then how much work I had to do to block nearly all of it out.
Then spending the last four years letting it all back in again. Safely.
…I’m still working on that part.
///
Physical touch over there is hard to explain. It isn’t really like being touched, but it’s not exactly like the memory of being touched either. It is very real, but in a place that exists in a new part of your brain, one that a fully rational mind doesn’t access.
All things that involve the dead are strongest in the soft place between awake and asleep.
I’ve said it before, but it does feel unfair that I insinuate not having intimacy when I spent the entire morning laying in bed at my beach house talking to someone I am deeply in love with as he kissed my shoulders and back and ears and cheeks and mouth like my skin was water.
Intimacy without expectation is a real revelation for me.
///
I was looking for a specific moment in my private journals and ended up reading almost three entire journals from my senior year of college, when things with [redacted] were very intense.
Fifteen years ago, I said out loud to myself several times.
One of the things that is constant confirmation to me is seeing things he said to me back then and feeling the truth in them now. I laugh bitterly when I read some of the entries, even though I’ve read them all at least ten times. Somehow, the shock and disgust is always brand new.
He told me exactly who he was, and I refused to believe it. There was every sign imaginable that he was a monster, and I thought I just knew him better than everyone else. I had the most grace and forgiveness and love, more than every other person who had given up on him.
Talk about an unreliable narrator. Oh, kiddo. Oh, honey. Oh, my love.
I have no idea who should get these journals when I’m gone. It’s the only thing I ponder over. The rest of it? I could care less. Take whatever you want.
I just don’t know who should have to carry this burden. It almost feels unfair to give it to anyone else. But to see these words fall into a landfill, unread?
Oh, dear.
///
“I just feel like I should be doing more,” I said. “Service work or soul work or…”
My oldest lover lifted a hand and gestured around the room. “You have your beach house back, after more than ten years. Do not discount that. You can always do more, absolutely, but don’t dismiss the work you’ve already done so far.”
My tarot cards keep telling me that I’m doing a great job, that I am handling my business, that I am strong and powerful and I need to keep walking this path. That’s all well and good, but as always, I circle back to the same question.
What now? What next?
The Constant Pursuit of Ghosts 