The Warmth

How free are you?

The ink puts these words in front of me, not as a warning or a threat, but as a guide. There is a freedom in movement. A freedom like no other where the wind takes your open hand and outstretched arm and lifts it up and down, over the curves of the distant hills. The highway becomes an endless ticket out of anywhere, from anyone. No one can ever catch you or bring you down. The infinite-next-destination freedom is powerful, but the freedom is also elusive. You can never hold it, and it can never hold you. When the driving stops and the walking ceases, the weight of existence does come down and the question creeps in to be heard:

Will I ever feel home here? Will I ever feel safe? Or will I always be home in the atmosphere—in the passing by faces of acquaintances and the high of living slightly above?

These questions are something even a strong heart can’t push away as it seeps in like nausea, a queasy uneasy feeling in the chest. It only goes away when the movement begins again, because the constant-escape freedom is grounded in the air, as secret and magical as the unexpected rise of the plastic parachute man taken by the updraft of undetected wind.

That sort of freedom is not the kind of freedom I prefer anymore. It’s not the kind of freedom I originally wanted either. While it makes for grand discoveries and unimaginable wisdom, it needs high energy. Like snow-globe crystals need an ever-present hand to make the flakes twirl and dance around, the movement freedom needs an ever-present shake from all ties. It needs constant snipping and endless fuel—not something anyone was ever meant to have or meant to take on, at least nobody living. I’ve never seen a live plant in the breeze—only essences hanging on, looking, searching, and hoping for ground to take root. The letting go and never connecting can become sort of an addiction, like the ethereal life is already home, but the seeds in the air know it’s not. They liked moving too because there seemed to be no place worth connecting to anymore—no place safe and sane enough to brave roots into the ground.

Ah, but now, I understand a different kind of freedom. One that has walls and windows and a door. I used to hate walls—they all had to be burned down because they were prisons, but these walls are warm. They’re wooden and cozy, brightly painted with light shining in, heavenly in the puffs of dog’s breath and oven-exhales as dinner is lovingly tended to by my boyfriend’s seasoned hands. A full plate, heavy with substance and aroma is passed to me through the bar-opening in the kitchen, and I receive from my seat on the couch, surrounded by love and tender warmth. We all thought families didn’t exist. We all thought unconditional love was something to be feared because it had only ever been taken advantage of and abused. Conditions and guards needed to be set. Full trust could never be given because every time it was, it was exploited, destroyed, mutilated, and shattered, and thus freedom, in a grounded sense, could never be attained.

But all that’s changing. These wooden, paneled walls hold a connectedness that speaks to the trees outside. They promise not to promise, but to just be, in each and every moment just as they are, protecting from nature’s forces while allowing whichever ones we need and desire to be let in. They are as the pines outside. There is an allowance and flow in this home that is not unlike the spaces between the trees, providing room for celebration, release, and higher connectedness, while also leaving room for growth, time apart for unique acceptance, and time together for the strengthening and integration of it all. A beam of light, not unlike the kind discovered in movement and air, is gifted in this safe and grounded freedom. It grows more powerful as the nucleus trust ripples out, fully realized in moments of static cleansing: nonsense, junk, and babble from the day filtered out as the frequency becomes fluid and full-bodied again, given life in the embraced home of honest souls deeply in love.

The freedom is in the pool—the pool of warm water that emerges as the prickly and intruding noise drowns out, and the golden energy spills into the home and into the aura of the animals and trees around, affecting everything like a drop of honey in a cup of tea. The glowing stillness and incredible hope draws us to rest, sit, dance, stand, gaze, or lie down, if only to sip on the sweetness and ponder the true meaning.

None of this was ever about you or me, heaven or hell, the ground or above. It was always about energy. What kind of energy do you exude? Is it the kind that’s chemical, manufactured, toxic, and fake, or is it the kind that’s natural, honest, and pure? What about the energy around? What kind do you attract and keep, and what kind do you filter out? What kind do we want to cherish, foster, and nourish?

I personally want to cherish this trusted home energy—the honeycomb kind that takes hard work, patience, and love, and makes me feel safe and understood, while also comfortably warm at night. I’ve been comfortably cold for a while. Comfortably any kind of weather, actually, but that was because it was all I knew. I had completely forgotten that comfortable warmth ever existed—the kind that the ink from my pen discovered long before me and will discover long after me as well. The ink takes ground along the page, pooling in the pulse of genuine love and trust, finding home in the eyes of the reader who truly resonates and understands.