Dear Worry

What's in this Bag?

As I write this, there’s a downpour outside. Thunder. I love the sound of it so much. Find it so comforting. The roar of the metal roof like a thousand tiny drums— how when the rain lessens, I hear a kind of quiet that I couldn’t have heard before.

Everything is like that.

There’s a density to things. Then some time later there is space. An opening.

It’s been like that with you. How tight and rushed you feel inside. How out of control life can feel.

Then, space.

That’s me. I’m making that. Or rather, it exists always, only I have just now learned to be with it, to feel it expand. The sensation of what’s there. The rise and fall of my chest.

I lay on the floor and find Rest. I move my body so slowly, that I can feel each and every articulation. Not to fix anything or to find anything. But just for the Rest and Relaxation the slow movement brings.

When I’m done, more space. Dreams. My mind wanders and explores.

I am on a river in the dark with a bag of my stuff. Why? I don’t know. It’s so dark, then once I push off shore, I realize I can’t see anything. I’m part of a moving darkness that is holding me and moving me around. It’s carrying me and I just have to be in it.

Things get a little hairy. I look around for something. A tool.

I find a small paddle. I make my way back to shore—purely by listening to the sound of the water and the land and my boat. My bag of stuff manages to stay on board.

Sometime later there is another kayak with several people. They don’t have real paddles either, and they are floating around in the dark. I join them, our boats parallel each other. We go down a series of rapids. Dark rapids. Water we can’t see at all, only feel. Only hear. Fear rises and subsides. Survival wanes and waxes. An urgency: I must be on this water, I am on this water, this water is invisible.

At the end, just as the sun is rising, we see each other and find that we’re in a wide calm area. “We need life vests, and paddles, and food,” one of the other people say. I don’t know any of them at all.

It’s clear we’re going to continue, and it’s clear we could be better prepared. But there’s another sensation. We’ve lived. We’ve arrived. The water is wide and calm and open. There is Rest here. The shore. The sun. Now things are visible. More known. It’s as if we’re going to wait for the dark to continue, but here, there is an opening. There is time to Rest in the daylight.

What a dream this was.

Me in my boat—leaving a hotel, I think, a friend sending me off—there’s no question that I’ll go. It’s clear that it’s time to go. That it’s dark. No matter. I hastily put some clothes in a plastic trash bag—white. Thin stretched plastic. During the ride on the water—I hold onto it a few times. Not wanting to lose it. But understanding—it’s not secured in any way.

I don’t lose it. But I don’t use it either. I just need it with me, dear Worry. Isn’t that interesting?

Back on the floor, my knees are bent while I’m on my back. I’m swaying back and forth. Being with my legs and hips and chest—feeling how each movement from side to side changes everything—from toes to ear. What a marvel that is. How precious that is.

This is my boat.

On the river, I stayed with it.

The fear of the dark. The moving water invisible in it’s pure blackness.

And yet, it carried me.

Love,
Kris