My dearest Bianca
I’m sorry there has been a lack of letters. Believe me, I benefit from and need them just as much as you do.
I had a beautiful morning. It was existential. There’s much to be explained. However, I need to take a moment here and be sad. Because I feel like I’m walking on a tight rope, above an abyss that is actually the twisty line between my yin and my yang. And while I am on the very cusp, of dare I say, balance, there are moments that are simultaneously throwing me into the light and the dark parts of me.
But I am a work in progress.
This morning was existential. This afternoon was the very opposite of that.
I am sickened and sad, I had to kill several very beautiful chicken embryos today. Did you know when I was a little girl I had two baby chicks? I think that’s why I’m heartsore and upset about it. Science takes the magic out of life. Truly.
When you were a kid, where did babies come from? They were baked with love in heaven and a stork brought them. That is, until you ask an adult what sex is. Then things change.
So yeah, rainbows came from unicorns and leprechauns had a pot of gold at the end but science comes along and just smashes you with ‘particles’ and ‘refraction’ and ‘prisms’. Fuck physics.
My chicks were adorable. I bought them at a grade 7 market day thing my school hosted when I was in first grade. I was bullied into this decision by the sales person who blatantly stated that the chicks who don’t get bought will be fed to a python. I think from my first day on earth I was a soft hearted little thing. I mean my first word was my dog’s name. So I picked two chicks. I had no idea what they were. And they grew into these scrawny roosters, and they fought each other for earth worms and they literally ate my brother’s carefully grown chilli plants – he, was pissed.
We ended up giving them to one of my dad’s clients, he apparently had a ‘nice’ farm and my roosters would grow to have a happy and fruitful and long life. Or so they told a naïve 7-year-old. I still hope they had a good life.
But truly I digress.
The intention of this letter was not meant to be negative, as I said, this morning was existential.
For the past few days, each morning I’ve wanted to write you an “Autopilot thoughts” letter. My drive into the city is usually pretty average or uneventful and I [very dangerously] end up driving on autopilot, which frees my mind to think about a series of wonderful and very random things. However, when I finally come home… the last thing I want to do is write an autopilot thoughts letter, because during the afternoon drive, I usually get pretty pissed.
And frankly, my dear, you deserve a letter that isn’t just me swearing in three different languages.
So although I did have an autopilot morning today, this letter will not be one of those. I shall save some of my autopilot thoughts for another letter.
So this morning.
It took me a long time to drag myself out of bed. Let me just say humans aren’t meant to rise before the sun does. I need that star to shine, for me to even think about functioning.
Nevertheless, I began driving and it was such an easy drive.
I love those mornings. The lights kept going green for me, I cruised for so long.
Arcade Fire began playing on my iPod. A song called ‘No cars go’
“we know a place where no planes go
We know a place where no ships go
No cars go”
And I’m still cruising, even though it was a struggle to get out of bed, and the sky is getting lighter and suddenly there is a very large moon and I’m not going to lie here, I wish it were right in front of me but no… first it was to my right. Centred, but to my right. And then, after a couple of turns it was to my left.
“between the click of the light and the start of the dream”
But it was so full. And so glowing, and I could see the craters on it. And in some or other moment it was almost on the horizon, so close and so big and so ethereal that you could just drive straight towards it. Really.
Now the science in my life has ruined that. I’m not about to build a tower of Babylon to try reach the moon, but I do think about how much I wanted to be an astronaut growing up. And I know that driving to the moon would never work… but if there ever was a moon and a day in which driving to the moon would be possible, it was this morning at 6:42 AM.
And now ‘Rebellion’ begins to play.
“Don’t know where we’re going”
And I’m still looking at this massive moon, thinking about how much I want to stop, and just howl.
When I was little I used to howl. Really. I thought maybe some sort of magic would come in to me, during a full moon.
“Sleeping is giving in, no matter what the time is,
Sleeping is giving in, so lift those heavy eyelids.”
And now, many years later I’m working on acknowledging my inner magic, because it’s there. I know it is. I can feel it.
“People say that you’ll die faster than without water,
But we know it’s just a lie,
To scare your son and scare your daughter”
Does the full moon affect me? Yeah, you can say that. There’s just something about it.
“People sway that your dreams are the only things that save ya.
Come on baby in our dreams, we can live on misbehaviour”
And everything feels aligned suddenly, it is so strange, I’ve gone through 10 km of driving with like no red lights, and the moon is this constant, sifting in and out and between the trees on the horizon. So big and so bright. And I crest this hill, and the moon is in front of me, and my rear view mirror is so bright because there is the star that give us life.
And I’m not making this up, as soon as I see the sun, the song, well, the song does this:
“now here’s the sun, it’s alright
Now here’s the moon, it’s alright!”
And Bianca, it is alright. For the first time in a fucking long time, I feel like I’m not on the edge of this deep dark abyss of fucked, and everything is alright. I’m okay.
And the moon is in front of me. And the sun is behind me and I’m right there in the middle of them. Aligned in more ways than one.
And you know what strikes me?
Is that every single human on this earth, both bad and good, and evil, and forgotten, and lost and lonely, and successful and in love… each one of us, have two things in common. We all have this moon. And we all have this sun. And probably most importantly, we are all suspended in the same beam of sunlight.
And this is when I realise what I’m feeling is a thing called presence.
Something that I’ve wanted and worked for and attempted in meditations. And I now know that I want to find this moment more often. As often as I can.
Because now I know that somewhere on the edge of that abyss, there exists this thing called now. This moment.
And you know what?
I’m gonna be alright.
And You’re gonna be alright.
Hang in there my sister-friend, I know things aren’t as easy and as simple as they could be for you right now. But we are gonna be just fine.
All of my love and light
Justyna
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