The flicker of plasma light.
I went to the Lunar New Year parade in Chinatown again this year, yet because I live down here I could get to the start of the parade, instead of just its aftermath. I invited Tracy and was nice to hang out with her again. Partly because I honestly haven't been hanging out with almost anyone lately. So much of what my life was here, isn't here in NYC anymore. Yet alternatively so much what I always wanted finally is.
I am sitting in a quiet moment in my, MY apartment. These four walls, a door, an air conditioner, a bed, a table, a mirror, a rug, and two lights. Its small and simple, yet in a way its everything I have striving for in life in the last 10 years since graduation college. When I graduated, its funny, I didn't miss all the opportunities my college community brought me, or the classes I could take. Yes I missed my friends, but what I really missed was a space of my own. Emotionally, physically. To have my own life, and to have my own space that I felt I could relax in.
With everything thats happened in my life since 2007, thats the one thing thats alway been in the back of my head. The idea that if I could just have a space of my own, I could breath out, feel at least a bit of what I felt in those last two years of college and build my life again.
In a way I have done this a few times since then, but never as purely, and as truly as right now. There is no distraction with other life plans, its just me, this apartment, my comforter from college and that feeling of content.
I watch the plasma light cast its pink and purple light and I feel calm. I feel right. Because everything I need be be content is here, and everything else is blocked out. But I wonder, if behind all that, beyond that basic urge to be "back" here - in a space emotionally like this I mean- if there wasn't something deeper?
Thats when this excitement hit me. I wondered what it would be like to reject all this. I am not dumb. I realize what always drives me to do better for myself is times in my life when I feel at conflict, not content. To accept this moment and every day after, to warmly accept contentness, MEANS to reject personal progress. The kind of progress that allowed me to feel this kind of contentness for the first time.
But imagine, letting go of all this, being strong enough to want more than this. To leave that 10 year old security blanket behind could mean changing the pattern my life has been. To have all my actions being driven off a different point.
It would be scary to let this go, but it would also give me so much drive to find something else that could bring a whole new kind of satisfaction, or drive. To maybe even evolve a bit, because its about damn time for that for me. Because when you choose to let something go (versus having it torn from you) that act can be the most empowering thing in the world. And I now realize thats what I have accidentally set myself up to do.
So I sit watching the last bits of the sunset fade, and watch my plasma light cast its glow, and I wonder- can I? Will I? I breathe in everything that I wanted and wonder- what could I become if I could just let everything else go?
I am sitting in a quiet moment in my, MY apartment. These four walls, a door, an air conditioner, a bed, a table, a mirror, a rug, and two lights. Its small and simple, yet in a way its everything I have striving for in life in the last 10 years since graduation college. When I graduated, its funny, I didn't miss all the opportunities my college community brought me, or the classes I could take. Yes I missed my friends, but what I really missed was a space of my own. Emotionally, physically. To have my own life, and to have my own space that I felt I could relax in.
With everything thats happened in my life since 2007, thats the one thing thats alway been in the back of my head. The idea that if I could just have a space of my own, I could breath out, feel at least a bit of what I felt in those last two years of college and build my life again.
In a way I have done this a few times since then, but never as purely, and as truly as right now. There is no distraction with other life plans, its just me, this apartment, my comforter from college and that feeling of content.
I watch the plasma light cast its pink and purple light and I feel calm. I feel right. Because everything I need be be content is here, and everything else is blocked out. But I wonder, if behind all that, beyond that basic urge to be "back" here - in a space emotionally like this I mean- if there wasn't something deeper?
Thats when this excitement hit me. I wondered what it would be like to reject all this. I am not dumb. I realize what always drives me to do better for myself is times in my life when I feel at conflict, not content. To accept this moment and every day after, to warmly accept contentness, MEANS to reject personal progress. The kind of progress that allowed me to feel this kind of contentness for the first time.
But imagine, letting go of all this, being strong enough to want more than this. To leave that 10 year old security blanket behind could mean changing the pattern my life has been. To have all my actions being driven off a different point.
It would be scary to let this go, but it would also give me so much drive to find something else that could bring a whole new kind of satisfaction, or drive. To maybe even evolve a bit, because its about damn time for that for me. Because when you choose to let something go (versus having it torn from you) that act can be the most empowering thing in the world. And I now realize thats what I have accidentally set myself up to do.
So I sit watching the last bits of the sunset fade, and watch my plasma light cast its glow, and I wonder- can I? Will I? I breathe in everything that I wanted and wonder- what could I become if I could just let everything else go?