darling, stay with me

explorations into the interstitial dimensions around sensation: being in body and world during multiple genocides.

Over the the past 300 days my body has been drifting away me - often lingering on the edge of other worlds. I, too, have been leaving her. I have been travelling across multiple timelines wondering how I (and we) got here (a meta sense of ‘here’ - unrelated to previous post).

I exited and returned to this moment (my here), this beating timeline that tonight is tingling beneath my fingers. Right now I can touch it-this life-and I can feel it’s magnificent power connecting me to all that I love and desire, and all that we love and desire.

Like you, I have seen thousands of people trudging between shelled memories and homes, carrying remains in plastic bags - only to find bombs waiting on the other side of Fajr.

I tell myself this can’t be real.

This can’t be the world we are living in.

But I made the mistake of believing my words. And that was the first sign of my departure. If this can’t be real, maybe somewhere in an alternate universe the children of Palestine are eating from their grandparents’ trees and my father is alive.

So I left.

Months pass until I returned. It did not come easy to me, this being here. This choosing to be present takes a deep commitment that I am not well-versed in.

This work of making me and my life tangible is a process I rediscover as new, everytime. This time (and other times) my truth is to grasp the abstract out of the ether and make it tactile. To translate me into something I can touch and caress. I glide my fingers along these words; feel them, see them, love them.

Yoga and pilates are my current medicines for this season’s return to body. I am beginning to teach myself (once again) how to stay. I am learning that discomfort and sensation are not the same as pain, the body has many languages and I am a translator.

My chest is stiff and my muscles protest when I attempt to open them. Still I try - and I say, stay.

My hamstrings are tight, they have been on this chair for much too long. Still I try - and I say, stay.

All the lost timelines have built a stone monastery in the joints of my shoulder and on the left side of my neck, they hate to be disturbed. Still I try - and I say, stay.

So this time, I am also believing this word of mine: stay.

Despite the horrors we are witness to, I hope we can make this place beautiful and I hope more of us get to stay.

Hopefully for a little longer.