Anti-Retrograde
On going from spinning in a direction opposite to one’s own axis to steadily moving forward
Hello, dear reader! Allow me to write to you from our new home’s balcony in Bangalore, close to midnight, with bats swooshing atop the treetops and ‘Night Drive’ by Ari Lennox’ playing in my ears.
As if in a pattern, I’ve taken to stopping from time to time and letting a moment of warmth stretch out in awareness. The more I do it, the more chances I get to do it. Life is strange…
I’ve started working a new job in a different role: it’s been just more than a week and I catch myself at random times during the day just experiencing a glimmer of joy. When that happens, an elusive mix of fear and gratitude pass over me. Fear that all of what’s going well could vanish any day but an overpowering gratitude that things are going well right then.
Thence, I’m reminded of Benson Boone’s ‘Beautiful Things’:
And I think I might have it all
[…]
But the things He gives me He can take away
I consider myself an atheist but more often than not, when I give gratitude my body seems to have a mind of its own, disparate from my logical, thinking brain— I look up and my hands almost join in a prayer.
Thank you, I say…
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On my way home from the office, I still can’t convince myself that I’m living a dream, a reality that only a little while ago felt distant and almost unachievable.
Now I truly know why people touch wood.
Despite our magnanimous achievements and progress as a race, we are fragile little creatures dreaming, spinning one way then figuring out that the other way is more natural; all the while feeling a complicated array of emotions and constantly in pursuit of making the most of our tiny individual time windows—in this life, on this mother.
I wonder if whales feel the same way…
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