He Showed Me What It Means to Be Recklessly Open.
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He said he’d brought me a present.
And in an enormous country tavern, in the middle of nowhere, we were the only two people who weren’t slumped at the bar. We talked. Yearned. Melted. We leaned in toward each other, convincing our young waitress, I’m sure, that we’d known each other for eons… and loved each other even longer.
In the parking lot, he kissed me in the snow — butterfly softness, sweet, electric — then placed a worn, black Moleskine on the seat of my car. Oceanic blue eyes searched mine. He said he loved whales — and I was coming to believe that’s because they lived in those eyes.
“I said I’d brought you a present…” No explanation. Dancing steps back to his car as I stood, my breath caught, watching as a grin slowly stretched my lips, still tingling from meeting his.
Full to the brim with sketches, poetry, scribbled names and chronicled moments. Personal moments. Heartbreaking inquiry over the course of a separation. A search for meaning.
He’d given me his journal. His journal. Over a year of wonderings as he traveled the world, the language of his spirit poured onto pages, now sitting in my hands. It brought an entirely new meaning to the phrase “I am an open book.”
He was. Literally.
I felt shy to read his words, like I had stumbled across something I was not supposed to see. His vulnerability in letters and phrases. His pain, in poetic musings wrapped around sketches of people, mountains, black lines composing a moment of reflection somewhere on this earth. They told the stories of what was important in those five minutes.
The words spoke of the chapters and waves of emotion as he fell in love, then watched it slip from his fingers in beach scenes and phone calls.
He gave it to me to do with what I might. And in so, he humbled me.
I wanted to bow to his bravery, to his vulnerability, his willingness to be completely, radically, recklessly raw. He tells me that when his heart broke, he launched himself into mountain pursuits that others worried were his attempt at death.
He was busy meeting God, he says.
Choosing life. Choosing every breath, consciously. Because it’ll all end someday — that is certain. Why waste energy on fearing when?
***
His radical openness shocked me. His soft heart meeting mine in a space of tender wondering, the flames consumed us. For a moment in time, for a breath, for two or four or ten. I don’t really know. I gave myself to embers as the fire consumed ideas and words and fears, and left in its wake… space.
A void next to me. Sheets wrinkled, pillow pocketed from where his head once lay in troubled dreaming, it was much colder suddenly. And I couldn’t sleep anymore, couldn’t will myself to take leave of this waking, confusing world for that bliss of sleep.
His reckless courage brought him crashing into my heart.
And just as quickly, he turned and left.
Oceanic eyes tucked into the pocket of memory. The coarse comfort of skin on skin, bodies drowning in sensation, the tangle of bright curiosity, and an overwhelming commitment to now-ness… Like the whales he so loves, migrating onward, searching deeper for… something.
In his wake, space. Confusing, beautiful, reckless space. And black lines scrawled on worn pages, sketches of other moments, other breaths.
I wonder if I’m a sketch now too.
***
I find myself wondering if he knows how to be loved… or if he can only keep leaking, seeping, falling, climbing, and moving on.
I guess it doesn’t matter.
I turn too. Love is endless. And that is what matters.
***
Ankati Day has spent her life in movement — subtle or grand, on the yoga mat or on a plane halfway across the world. She is fascinated by the way the body expresses, teaches, and experiences pain and pleasure. She is a yoga teacher, singer, freelance writer, and dancer — as well as a jungle wanderer, holder of sacred space, people-watcher, and road trip aficionado. You can find her at her website.
***
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