The World

Has Shifted and So Have I

I used to not believe in a god, higher being, spirit. Like a good engineer’s daughter, I stick with physical explanations. I read Oliver Sacks (The Stream of Consciousness) and learn about the nervous systems of plants and worms. I imagine the electrical energy that courses through me, and how, because I am a being of so much water, I thrill to sound and morning light streaming onto the wood surface of my writing desk by the window, onto the lined page. I reflect on the words I write, which I imagine patterning mini pools of water inside my cells with the shape of new memories. When I get up and stretch my body, I hope to undo the knots in fascia taut over cheekbone and hip and find the deepest ways to hold my breath like I did in the sweaty heat of the hot yoga studio the night before, or when I sang, learning to smooth the voice as it rises from chest to head. Later, in bed, I contemplated an astrologer’s interpretation of planetary sightings in the cosmos relative to our lives on the earth, trying to stop my body from reacting to the excitatory world, some lawless force penetrating our citizen networks leaving empty spaces, screwing some lid tight via my jawbone, grinding teeth until I can loosen that grip. This morning, with two dogs pacing, monitoring potentially trespassing squirrels, I open up to the ‘more’ my logical mind never allowed me to fully embrace: the variation of human children from self and the simple joy of hearing their stories, or sharing a recording of my father telling his with my cousins on another continent. Because I feel our unity. Because I know the nudge of words can spur joint remembering, and I know a song can replenish the body with acknowledgement and surprise. This morning, I watch one dog nosing another’s head. The sunlight streams in to make the kitchen light and warm. Outside, the crisp air is still, icicles hang on the garage gutters, and the trampled half-white snow and dirt lies forgotten beneath the electric blue atmosphere, penetrable distance ringed by space, quantum mechanics holding us in a daily cauldron of news riling us, love renewing us. In my neighborhood, scoop of humanity in a cosmic flow, my mind taps out an early-morning ode to the fractal wonder of ordinary mornings.

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Listen to the accompanying Eacret and Ledeboer’s track, “It’s the Theory of Everything,”

a song that sprang from Al’s appreciation for Andy Partridge’s (XTC) lyrics and his own contemplation of physics and the universe.