“It seems facile to declare one single forbidden fruit, when humans live under so many different kinds of trees.”
~Barbara Kingsolver

(circa October 2016)

I’m lying in bed trying to sleep, my mind a restless scavenger, chewing on long-empty bones of wintry Facebook and Instagram screens. Outside my window, I hear thunder boom somewhere in the distance. Rain oscillates between rising torrents and fading whispers. Nyambura – girl born in the rain. I remember nothing and everything.

Maybe it’s the energy of last night’s full moon, lingering over the skies, or the howl of the wind through the spinning, dripping, rustling world of trees that awakens the gypsy in my subconscious. Either way, I must get up and fill these blank white voids with words. The creative daemon is awake and levitating, though it doesn’t speak.

So, let me begin.

My life is a mandala. I am not a bloom of every day, constant, unchanging, and predictable. No, I operate on a much more questionable almanac of hibernations, deceptively showing the white belly of death only to emerge stronger. Underground cocoons become sudden quirks, rapidly blossoming on faraway crags. Will-o-wisps. Ever beckoning. Though this gravity-deprived equinox seems to be a blackhole of chaos, I now detect some sort of mysterious pattern of re-genesis. I am moon-touched, rain-birthed.

For example, I started playing piano again after a few years of dormancy. I don’t really know why, but somehow an hour of piano soothes me in place of a grueling run. It’s fun.

By no means am I a virtuoso, though I have realized that there are now structures in my mind from experiences akin to music. I see notes as art: proportions, exponents of lines and curves. Rules to keep the sound waves resonating with reality. A few years of yoga teach me (somewhat) better rhythm; my mind is trained to find space instead of galloping down roaring waterfalls. Chemistry illuminates the riffs as they cycle, evolve, and transmute. It’s like tracking elements while they morph. Alchemy. 

I can’t seem to run, or even workout, right now. The past year, running was my daily ritual of nirvana. But, like a tapestry of life, that thread is below the surface right now. All things are impermanent – soon dusk will ascend on my days at the piano bench, and I will be sweating on the track. I have to remind myself that the time will come.

To those of you who are concerned about my recovery process, I thank you. My body, too, is slowly going through another healing ring in the mandala trunk. I still have moments of crushing depression, but the body dysmorphia seems to disappear with each step I take, each note I hit. The poison is losing potency.

It’s October 18th. A year ago I succumbed to revolution, burying myself in a building that would ignite into hibernation. I carefully locked myself away and threw away the keys. But, as the moon hid on the other side of the earth, she pulled the keys up from the depths. It’s just a matter of finding the willpower to untangle myself from the roots that grow over me. I must shed this skin, and shape shift, and sail into a new ripple of dawn.

Soon it will once again be time to walk outside as it rains.