Slow Down My Beaten Heart.
{Francesca Woodman}
I’d like to remember the smell of early mornings; get up before the sun and be the first Eve who’s ever walked on Earth. Does anybody know what dew is?
I’d like to be a cat when I stretch, feel my cells multiply as I reach the other side of a yawn; decaffeinate my heartbeats, green up my tea, unblock my creative aorta, juice out my imagination.
And question everything, the how, the what, the why behind the why, this curious human condition.
I’d like to reach a higher scale in my shower symphony, compose an opera on the spot and splash the bathroom walls with unapologetic notes. Wash all my sins away with organic soap. Look in the mirror and believe.
I’d like to answer all my phone calls, return all emails in a timely manner and mean the how-are-yous; not hide my broken hallelujahs, not save my gratitude for characters in books. Put love on sale, like I should.
I’d like to be a friend of both insects and men, not be afraid of spiders, not step on ants, save someone, somewhere, anything.
I’d like to yogalize my poses, buddhalize my prayers, jesusize my love and hindulize my smile.
I’d like to whisper to only a few souls under a blanket instead of shouting at hundreds over these virtual rooftops. I’d like to inhale people and exhale skin, explore huggability and memorize the art of breathing.
I’d like to love you out loud, not only in the dark cave of my mind, with bats hanging out of my eyes, upside down, insomniac, irresolute, and dizzy…
I’d like to speak in complete sentences, instead of SMSing, DMing and WhatsApping E-people with LOL lives always in > or < demand for + FB Likes. I’d like to kiss with my lips instead of XOX-ing with my keyboard. I’d like to hear some real birds chirp over my shoulder, not blue, dead birds tweet hashtags with my fingers.
I’d like to get up once a week with no other agenda than laziness in bed, no time, no musts or shoulds or have tos. Eat breakfast for dinner, juice for lunch, and talk to trees, and cry, walk backwards, love my solitude, and understand my doing by undoing.
I’d like to be art, not make it, be home, not build it, be life, not just live it. Become the outer layer of my own aliveness. Be the director of my movie, not a tired actor on someone else’s screen.
I’d like to love my neighbor even when his fucking TV drives me so fucking crazy I could reach across the fucking wall, pull out the morning-show fucks and get them another fucking job that doesn’t degrade humanity.
I’d like to be 100% recyclable, untraceable, not remembered, only perceived, non-violent, transparent, like water; donate all my organs, leave only footsteps on a beach, not carbon footprints on our children’s faces.
I’d like to have some faith, just any faith, that I can walk on water and not drown; and even if I didn’t have that faith, jump off my sinking ships with no lifesaver, anyway.
I’d like to have kids so they can point at life with chubby fingers and big bright eyes, because life is so new, it doesn’t have a name. So they remind me of the fearless truth I used to know when I arrived into the world. And when my kids forget, I want grandchildren.
{Amélie – Screenshot}
I’d like to write real letters – with ink and stuff, on that thing of the past called paper. And seal them with my royal ring on candle wax; send them away with a carrier pigeon and wait patiently for the answer, enchanted by the life outside my castle.
Not type up anxious atoms on a screen, with fifty windows open, five songs inside each ear, my flashy hope in ads, my life reduced to headlines, click, double-click to open, restart, refresh, close, open, close again, why-won’t-you-load, you fucking piece of shit?
I’d like to finish all the books I start. Review the universal story through every pair of glasses. And after all is said and done, be even more convinced that I know nothing yet. That I was born and I will die, and in between, a moment, you and me, this fading light and I.
I’d like to believe that we’re not just numbers plus minutes plus blood plus agony, but human issues, crazy planets, the universe brushing its hair; and like all great short stories, we sound familiar, but haven’t really happened any place or time before.
I’d like to love and lose and love again, and lose and love and lose again, because what else is there to do?
I’d like to sit with old people and understand why they’re not in a hurry, why they don’t want to get out of themselves, or go some other place, so badly. Rest my pulse on their bulldog wrinkles; and listen closely to the stories they tell from when the world didn’t use to end.
I’d like to take naps, lots of naps, and in that deep, redeeming sleep, rewrite the past and future into Now.
I’d like to be more than a word, a sentence or a paragraph. I want to be an entire chapter, or better yet, a novel. Be written in detail. Survive the darkness. Rephrase the light.
I’d like to think with no thoughts that the heart is its own country, in which I am allowed without a passport, a face, a resume, a bank account or any kind of title.
And write with no fingers on that flickering life that passes as we write, incessantly, about how life is passing through our fingers.
***
If you, like me, have overplayed this song for the past ten years, you need to do it one last time.
And if you haven’t, close your eyes and… breathe?
[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr_L38bwZhU”]
*A version of this piece has also been shared on elephant journal.
{Slow Love}
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Andrea Balt
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