“I don’t know how many years it takes to get reborn as not the flower, but the scent.”
Lucia Perillo
I think of the long journey that led me here, 5,000 miles from Seattle, Washington to Ayzieu, France. A long journey with my two cats in tow. We are all jet lagged, time distorted. In the middle of the night I lie awake feeling completely alone. I listen to the silence. look out the window to a canopy of stars, a half moon. I have practiced silence for so many years that in doing so I found that I had less to say. Now I am speechless. I feel utterly insignificant, a mere grain of sand in the natural landscape.
We breath the the world in, inhaling a collection of gases we can’t see, yet the unseen world is real, full of invisible dust from the universe, debris of the galaxies. Monet once said he wished he’d been born blind and suddenly recovered his sight so he could see things as they really were instead of how they’re supposed to be.
I’ve traveled the world to find a place where I could recognize myself. I borrowed past cities and communities until I found my own, worn them like clothes handed down that didn’t quite fit. In the dark of the night, under a blanket of stars and down, I begin to unwrap the secrets of myself. The truth is that sometimes we just stop inquiring who we are and who we are with, therefore, we don’t notice when things change, as they always will. We are beautiful particles, dynamic beings, always in motion. We are stardust.
Of the womb, divided unto myself, renewing life at each breath, of thee I sing.
