This week’s column is a compilation of vignette-style writings I wrote on a solo trip to St. Thomas at the end of February. Enjoy these watery musings from the thick of Pisces season ~~~ 🎏🐚🧜🏻♀️🥲
OCEAN
flying over, I wanted to just be dropped into it, as a comfort. let it jolt me actually awake. cold but also deep, vast, all-knowing mothering. I felt it would understand me. and also would consume me. and I would feel afraid but it somehow wouldn’t be menacing. it would wrap me in crushing velvet arms and offer lapping kisses, saying “I know, I know…let me take you home to the beginning of you…come back to me…”
I couldn’t tell if the little white spots were wave caps or boats being tossed about. how humbling to be the latter. how odd to see that from above and have absolutely no control over it.
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VIEW
in some ways, i’m grateful I grew up poor. the experience of flying, of The Look Below, hasn’t yet gotten any less euphoric for me. how can you sit by a window and not have your nose pressed to it half the time?
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SKIN
maybe my skin is something that was always supposed to set me apart. it’s taken me my whole life to come to accept it (and I still often don’t); taken me my entire experience of time so far to grow into my unique beauty.
i’m on an island surrounded by expats who all have the same admittedly beautiful, golden tan. I get looked at at the beach probably because i’m so fair — but also perhaps because im *beautiful,* or because I have radiant energy, or because my spirit attracts those that are curious. and I just *happen* to be fair. maybe I could try and wrap my brain around that as a possibility.
the fairest of them all… 🪞
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CELINE DION
I am laying in the dark in my island bed, gauzy white curtains shifting with the breeze from the open windows, the ocean making sounds not far off. I talk to my mom on the phone, then call my lover next. i stare at the ceiling. there is no tv. I feel a noisy but contented mix of feelings churn blessedly inside me; i’m nervous, giddy, anxious, blissed, anticipating, excited, wonder-filled, at peace, at rest, aching, pining, sad, lonely, connected, and deeply grateful for it all more than anything. I get a revelatory ping from my spirit that grounds me so much into the present moment it hurts: you’re here, I remind myself. like i’m really just randomly on an island on a Tuesday in February because that felt like the next right move. booking a solo island trip on minimal funds and with a couple weeks notice is not unlike me but that is just it - I am suddenly confronted with the naturalness of my free spirit, how inherent and almost nonchalant it is. flippant. of course i’d do this. it really didn’t take much thought. I hear a call and I go. some times it takes me (much) longer to respond than others — and yet I think that even those recursions are assuredly leading me down the larger spiral path i’m on. 🌀
I am crying! I am full of so many good feelings! it is Pisces season and i’m meters from the ocean and I didn’t even really plan it that way! of course I’m full of tears and also the world!
a post on instagram reminds me of a Celine Dion CD my mom used to listen to when we were kids. I spotify shuffle a bunch of her songs and sing and horizontal-dance in bed and keep crying. I listen to this one multiple times because in this mood, duh:
xo,
Lo ❤️🔥
“of course I’m full of tears and also the world!” 🥹😭🥲🫶🏻🩵