Practice

This year I really wanted to start believing that I exist. Like for real. No cap.

After 5 years spent in the thin space of non-being, I was exhausted.

Walking is more tiring, talking is more tiring, eating is more tiring,

and writing, reading, running, sleeping, singing, shitting, shopping,

and tying my shoes, and cleaning my room, and drinking wine.

Everything is more exhausting if everything you do is undone

because you don't really exist. And yet you must function.

The last two years have been better. I could at least float in and out of states of awareness with only underlying yet incessant waves of unease. However, maintaining balance on the tightrope of reality is a fragile process.

One or two gushes of chaos could bring me free-falling into the void of existential fear.

Stuck in the claustrophobic walls of reality with no escape.

Or worse, in a catatonic state.

This year is the first time since I was 16 that I have truly believed my eyes and felt at ease in the comfy cotton hammock of reality. And if I fell, underneath me I would find the amazingly solid, amusingly rock-hard, gracefully concrete real floor.

I had pulled a magic trick, a real impressive stunt. I had sawed the woman in half, and then I put her back together again.

And voilà, here she is.

Even though magicians don't reveal their secrets, I think I can let this one slip.

Beyond needing to get a good grip on the mind, which is the first extremely hard step, I needed to get used to my heart beating, my blood pumping, my lungs breathing, and my bones existing. Therefore, this year I poured my soul into my relationship with my body. I wanted to nurture it and care for it, so it would never doubt again that it is real and mine.

I started with my insides. I went vegetarian.

I faced my fear of reality claustrophobia. I started caving.

I needed to get stronger and synchronised. I started practising yoga (again).

Plants made me lighter, so I could balance better. I started to move more intuned with the world. I could now carry myself, and I did so down into the winding bowels of the earth.

All of these practices together have made my house of a body a welcoming place to stay.

This poem is about yoga, about rebuilding the pieces of my body that I had lost along the way.

Here is Practice, a poem about stronger bodies and stronger minds.

And a song suggestion like always:

Practice

In March I had folded.

But since September,

I took a breathe in,

I slid into child’s pose

I stretched out my legs

I grabbed all my toes.

I cactused my shoulders

And closed my eyes,

my breath grew stronger

I strengthen my thighs,

I stretched out my branches

Balanced in tree pose.

My hips, calves and feet

move synchronised and slow

I sighed.

I can now twist and get tangled

My chest at sharp angle

turned towards the sky.

I lay down on the floor

So fucking free

I cried

All the shapes 

I never imagined

a body could be. 

Down in shavasana,

corpse pose.

I am alive

watching life

calmly

as it goes

as it goes

as it goes

...

May 2024