“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” ~Walt Whitman
Recently, blogger Alex, the fem de force behind gypsygirlsguide, asked what she would see if she were allowed a peek inside. Inside us, the reader. It caused me to pause and think about this. And to feel it, the inside. And to ask what is there. And when I closed my eyes and sat with all of it I experienced the vastness that I contain. The multitudes that Whitman speaks about.
At once there is storm and rain, but also deep blue skies the hues of which my conscious mind has only dreamt of experiencing. There is rich fertile soil juxtaposed with sand from a desert devoid of moisture. There is light so bright it is blinding, and a darkness so complete it feels impenetrable. There is wild laughter from a heart light and free, and deep despair that brings me to my knees with the weight of suffering. There are birds chirping and coyotes howling at the moon. There are frogs croaking their delight at being submerged in mud up to their eyeballs, and sweet cats curled up in late afternoon sunshine streaming in through a glass window. There are a million cars honking all at once on a busy street in Mumbai, and if you pause for a moment, through it all, there is a quiet stillness so vast it teeters on the edge of extinguishing all of it.
And this ever-morphing all-of-it, it’s me. Vectoring towards the vast quiet stillness, but allowing the dark, the light,the filth, the purity, the noise, the quiet. That word allow, I am taking it on as my mantra for this, the dawn of my thirty-fifth year.
I read something recently that’s a simple statement but has a profound impact on my direction:
