“…But…to sing,
to dream, to smile, to walk, to be alone, be free,
with a voice that stirs and an eye that still can see!
To cock your hat to one side, when you please
at a yes, a no, to fight, or- make poetry!
To work without a thought of fame or fortune,
on that journey, that you dream of, to the moon!
Never to write a line that’s not your own…”
― Edmond Rostand (Cyrano de Bergerac)
Truly, this summer has been one long indulgence in happiness. The festivals! The mountain hikes! All the adventures, great and small, long in the planning and spontaneous. Above all: the friends, new and old, which I have had the privilege of acquainting. I am so, so grateful for the opportunity to be close to such wonderful, inspiring people.
I still have a thing or two to learn when it comes to saying no to things and to chilling out. As per usual, the holidays have left me pretty wiped out. Nevertheless, I am healing. I can feel it happening. Take the starry sky for example—I’ve begun looking up at it feeling something of the old sense of wonder, rather than the crushing nausea and sense of failure I’d come to associate it with.
I’ve discovered freedom in many places. It’s in the smell of spending a third of the summer nights in a tent. It’s in the aching muscles of your legs after walking from one mountain to the next. It’s in the taste of eating pancakes in the oddest places. It’s in the relief of allowing yourself to cry. It’s in the chill of swimming naked in the middle of the night. It’s in the comfort of massage and shared sleeping-bags at the end of a long day’s hike. It’s in the euphoria of dancing close to someone for hours and hours. It’s in the sensation of making out in the sunshine during a long, lazy morning. It’s in the joy of having a friend whom you haven’t seen for far too long over for tea. It’s in the wonder of eating things that grew on your own balcony. It’s in the contentment of movie nights where the company is so much more interesting than whatever it is that you’re watching. It’s in the sweetness of long, meandering conversations about anything and everything, in holding hands and hugs that you wish would never end, and in the hope that maybe loneliness is an illusion, after all. It’s in the conviction that life will carry on and that things will probably work out, somehow.
Love and freedom,
Winterdragon
