I’m walking through a grove of redwoods beyond the Berkeley hills. I begin an inhale as a gust of wind begins to blow. The two movements of air happen to synchronize and merge and for a moment, I become boundaryless and transparent. The breeze holds all the carbon dioxide I’ve ever been.
Fallen leaves and soil softly carry the weight of my footsteps. Much gentler than concrete. I pass a sunny slab of rock and lie down. The ground holds the surface of my body. Gravity is a kind of desire. The Earth pulls my core towards its own. This wanting is more consistent than that of any other lover I’ve ever known.
For years I barely held myself together. I was anxiety and psychic duct tape. I’m slowly learning I might not have to do all that desperate holding. It seems more and more that the world has been doing the holding the whole time.
I’ve always been held by forces larger than I can know. This existence so nearly never happened. But it did, and the world has not dropped me since. Not for a moment. I mean, there’s trillions of mitochondria oxidizing away, right now, in just the right arrangement to give rise to this experience of “right now”. Living requires a million miracles, in every moment. Very few of them are my doing.
I used to think I had to hold myself together with willpower, hard work, hard-earned knowledge. I used to think I had to clench every muscle in my body and hang on fiercely to this earth. Now I’m not quite so sure.
I was brought into this world effortlessly, by forces I don’t know. I am brought into each moment effortlessly, by a million process I don’t choose. The world wills me into being, every single moment, through countless known and unknown reactions.
I don’t believe life would be putting on such a show if it didn’t want an audience and a partner. It wouldn’t be working so hard to hold me here if it didn’t want me here.
That’s all I know about being wanted, about holding and being held, about love and about the world.