swim on

i started writing it’s because it’s on because i wanted to get closer to enthusiasm. as A Sad Person, i wanted to practice attention liberation and felt like i needed an external structure to help me practice this, this changing the channel.1

the seed of it was learning that the etymology of enthusiasm is ‘in’ / ‘god’ / ‘earth’ quake — en / theo / seismo.2 i had felt rescued by so many moments of wonder, of awe, the feeling of having the rug ripped out from under me—ultimately fortifying disorientation. these moments felt like breakthroughs, small and large, as the surface of the earth also crumbles during an earthquake.

this practice has attuned me to this kind of wonder. and i am also learning that i don’t have to wait for these aha moments. whatever-it-is-that-breaks-through (what awe brings to us or brings us to) is also an energy that i can make myself available for, is a slow steady burn. it’s a current.

this current (beyond me and from the beyond) is always carrying me. i do not understand it but i trust it more and more every day. Gwendolyn Brooks expresses this current (to me) in her poem, Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III):

to live in The Along is to surrender to this current/life force. it is unpredictable and it is always on time. it knocks me off my feet. i was supposed to float.

i don’t know all the ways to dial in, to drop down into the current. i do know a few. poems are one. you might know yours by what you get goosebumps from or what makes you speechless (or makes you more gentle with yourself and others).

by the way, “Fish have an organ, the lateral line, running the length of the body, with which they sense not only vibrations in the water but also depth, direction, and temperature.”3 we have these too, these Current Detection mechanisms.

The Current, aka The Love, as in Love is Life Force.4

"Love changeful in you"5