loose change

the last day of september is upon us: a reminder that time moves deceptively fast, and another foray into some of california’s more anomalous weather, although it seems like the entire country is coping with varying levels of Unprecedented Climes. i’m reading the news too much.

today i’ve been thinking about the word teeming. teeming is a word that sounds exactly like it’s definition: be full of or swarming with. it can be applied aptly to so many things: a garden teeming with flowers, a sidewalk teeming with weeds, a hive teeming with bees, a mind teeming with thoughts.

my mind was teeming with thoughts this morning in the car. sometimes, when i’m alone and i’ve been silent for a good bit, it becomes easier to take stock of every passing thought. i think i mentioned last week how i’ll sometimes write these pieces in my head–this is a practice made easier by the presentation of thoughts in my mind as written lines. it isn’t constant, but i frequently see my thoughts spelled out in written word. usually in times new roman.

today wasn’t one of those seeing words days, but it was a teeming thought day. being home in this liminal period of time has me feeling very introspective. i’m reflecting and digging, analyzing thoughts and feelings that i should maybe just observe. i’m stagnating in these thought patterns, some of which feel central to the core of my being. my cortisol levels are higher, and my motivation to combat them is lower. it’s something i’ve felt since returning home. a few days ago, in the trenches of my closet purge, i walked into a metaphor that i’ve been trying to spell out since.

sometimes santa barbara feels like a pair of shoes that would be so perfect on me if they were just a half-size larger. like a gorgeous pair of clogs that i keep in my closet and wear every once in a while on special occasions, but that give me blisters and sore arches. shoes that i hold onto because how could i possibly let go of them? or it feels like a gorgeous dress that stays hung on the rack because of the out-of-body feeling it evokes when worn, the feeling of it’s a stunning dress but it just doesn’t feel like me right now. i wonder if the world would be different if humans gave themselves permission to follow gut feelings all of the time.

in our meditation today, we were asked to consider the space in which we sat. we were then asked to consider the space we hold within us. for the first time in a while i felt very small, in the grand scheme of things. it’s good to feel small sometimes, good to recognize the vastness of the world around us, to acknowledge there are billions of people’s worlds unfolding in our proximity of which we have no knowledge. i’ve been obsessing over geology lately. i’ve devoted hours to watching videos entitled secrets of supervolcanoes and how the earth was made. there is some sort of gratification in the reminder that we exist within a tiny fraction of the planet’s history. sometimes i wish i were more than an amateur geologist.

most of the questions i want to know have to do with the world around us. i think it’s good to be curious, and i intend to continue, but i don’t think anybody should strive to have all of the answers. there’s a lot of wonderment in the process of learning, but even more in the process of relearning. i like asking the same questions twice, learning the same answer and being twice as awestruck the second time.

i work at the restaurant tonight–it’s slowing down again, and carp has been cloudy and cold for most of september. i want to remember to stay present even in the slowness. thank you for reading today! i hope to encourage you to dig into some sort of prehistoric or tectonic history. other recommendations include inside out 2, or will ferrell and harper steele’s newest documentary, or listen to the moth radio episode called object of desire, specifically sara’s story about acquiring a toaster. see you in october…xxo r