I-70, Settling vs. Settling in
The road between Denver and Salt Lake is sublime; I have this hyper-vivid memory of once distinguishing sublime from its synonyms in some high school language arts class. The way memory cascades like water over rock, softening, filling space without claiming. Yes, the road. So much yellow belonging to trees I haven’t met, snow-capped peaks always in some distance, rivers running low and hard along the highway with a quickness. Pasture and red rock, ribbons of light laid gently over canyon walls thick with layers like a cake cut, buttes and mesas and craggy outcroppings jutting into autumn air perfumed with diesel, the sky an easel, clouds like a ghostly range I could easily squeeze.
I keep trying to envision that place — this place — as my home. No, but really, I live here, like I’m convincing myself to settle in with certainty. So long since I’ve put down roots that I’ve forgotten what it feels like, that communion with soil is never choreographed. I’m leaning into what residence can mean when it’s not contingent on certainty. What matters to me now is this deep comfort, and presence, and contentment to align fully with feeling, whatever footsteps that may trigger, in whichever direction. I feel infallible in an ethical way. Grounded in some primordial heartbeat unique to me and ubiquitous all the same. So slowly I am releasing the blanket pressure to produce and honing in instead on what feels easy and authentic, like a seed germinated, sprouted from patience and not haste for fruit.
On this full moon I am just so grateful to have eased off the gas, to flirt with brakes, maybe, is a good thing for a Virgo with time anxiety. There is no race and I’m not losing. It’s not confusing. I wake up with gifts and it is my great pleasure to unwrap them in this tiny beam of light that just keeps on returning like a moth to itself; I surprise myself each morning with this relentless, relentless love.
