All you need is love: They weren't lying.

I wonder if anyone else has ever felt this way: as if there's a vessel connecting the heart to the world itself, to the faceless, nameless, malleable world, a conduit for all its components-

shame, winter, sheets of kelp washing ashore, happiness, the way it feels to lie in a melting snowbank with the sun shining.

For me, it is impossible to block any of this out, to continue life in the relative cloister of my own apartment, the breakfast table, the short & dusty streets between one errand and the next. I know so many people (so many people I love, good people, the best) whose lives consist of this, a sort of confluence of domesticity and fear. They call themselves merely "realistic" or "cautious". They relate stories of relatives who've had their purses stolen, their trust misused. They don't do well at disguising their inherent mistrust of the world, of the people in it, and most of all at their own ability to adapt, to leave a zone of comfort and handle what's being presented to them.

...when I get to feeling like a Dust Bowl-era photograph, I have to leave, or fall in love...scores of people trudging down the walks, heads bent against a punishing wind...

That's what, I assume, it must feel like to be truly stuck, but 'stuck' is a state not of the mind but in the heart, a clogged line, an obstruction in that what we're doing seems to represent that in which we have faith. We had faith,

once, that digging this posthole and standing this solid piece of wood, and framing our lives like houses might be enough,

was what it took to build a life in the first place: a checklist of things one is supposed to have, according to someone else. We had faith that we'd be happy with materials, prefabricated. These people I know-they've had faith all their lives that they'd be left alone, free to

block the interchange of story & song & news about the weather if they choose to. To misunderstand and point fingers. Trudging on & on & on through a world they'd rather be closed to.

My friends have varying opinions. Some say it's ridiculous. Some think it's cute. Most just nod & smile, as if they know something I don't, when in fact they're hiding that they don't know anything about it at all,

the way a windstorm frightens someone into running outside, to cover the plants and hide the tools, forgetting to stand straight into it, to let it sweep through, blow something clean, leave something precious behind.

And they all do that, this rag-tag band of travelers, workers, & erstwhile thieves, the ones I let in to sleep on the couch, to share a meal & a beer, they all leave behind a little bit. Maybe a tiny gift (like the miniature jade elephants that hang from my pack straps, a gift from Shin of China, because I made dinner for her.) Maybe the soil from the soles of their shoes that reminds me it's time to be moving on myself, soon. Maybe just

a dozen different memories, all overwhelming, like something so truly joyous and funny that you've got to throw your head back to let the laughter out.

...I wonder how we survive without this, without the authenticity of other people, without some connection to the world that precludes self-preservation, without the little hairpin turns we take to move away from what's safe and comfortable and toward each other, toward what the world becomes through the eyes of others. I wonder what happens when literalism enters the phrase "You can't see the forest for the trees", when we drive on past the mountains without seeing them, without their pitch & peak entering us somehow, making us a little newer.

This happens to me every day-these minor movements like the pieces of a symphony, these little ways my heart is open & willing, willing even to be hurt or filled with sadness for the ways we hurt the land we live on, the people we live here with.

We all went out last weekend, the lovers, the dreamers, and me. We talked about places we'd already been. We talked about going back. We tore the world apart with our critiques and our senses of humor. We put it back together with our dancing. We petted dogs & walked on the trails,

where the sun over the inlet is like a bowl, its obstructed half full of cloud & snowstorm & blue.

I've never laughed so much in my life, & the vessel that is my heart is overflowing now, a surfeit of new friends & old ones, of implicit trust in the world, of backpacks & guitars & plans for everyone's future but our own. Full of uncertainty.

It feels a little like pain, this fullness of heart, like the whole world is trying to get in all at once, & just as I think I can't take it, someone says something funny, & we all laugh, & my sides are aching, and I think I can fly.

I know I can.
I know I can.
I know you can, too.