fantasy 08/29

The other day I was reading some of the letters and poems I have saved on my phone that my grandpa wrote to my grandma, and they always make me tear up a bit. I never knew that thoughtful, sensitive side of him, which saddens me a bit but also warms me to see it now. In performing the constant steadiness of life, it becomes easy to forget all the tenderness and all the complications that go on within the inner lives of everyone you come into contact with; and those too of the ones who came before you, whose tenderness and complications resulted directly in your existence. I fantasize often, and always have, about the way romance (not just with another but the sort of sense of it one carries with them) and security and contentment and hope feel in one’s body, the way they smell and taste. I’ve noticed lately though, in recent years, I experience these fantasies in real time, as if I’m living them. Sometimes the atmosphere smells like how I’d imagine it would when I was a kid, when I’d picture what it felt like to be grown up and like I had an idea of what to do, how to conduct myself. There was a period of adolescent misery I thought would never end, when I’d imagine myself driving along the coast by myself and the sides of the road being covered in poppies, blurs of orange backdropped against the horizon of the Pacific Ocean, extending infinitely. There was another one where I’d picture the apartment I’d live in, perhaps with other young adults, a classic San Francisco style one with creaky old windows opened all the way, and the breeze carried from Ocean Beach would be wafting through, blowing back delicate curtains, sunlight streaming in so generously. In these fantasies, I would always be okay, I would know peace in some form. I still can’t drive (though I am maybe one half a step closer), but some days I catch that particular feeling in my whole body, like I’ve arrived. I’m allowing nourishment into my life in a way that has previously been completely foreign, and it’s building an itch for more. I want to do every uncomfortable thing I thought I’d never accomplish, and then some more. The other day I was listening to the album Nancy and Lee by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood and let myself fall into daydreams - being somewhere outside the city, outside any tangible limits. To be dancing in a frilly 60s dress and cowboy boots in a saloon somewhere! I was listening to ‘Ode to Billie Joe’ by Bobbie Gentry too - I won’t disclose the other more embarrassing ones - and I was in a little country house where smart phones don’t exist, clean fresh air for miles, leaving the front door open all day to let in the breeze, bathing in a nearby creek, driving into town all dressed up just to hit the grocery store. For so long my world was so small, confined to the limits of my inhibition, my misery. And I had to know it to know anything else, I think, just like anyone else. But there has been a certain radical shift within me in the last six months to a year, a realization that life is much more abundant than I can ever imagine, that my life can be as well. I’m always inclined to put disclaimers here, to make sure I’m not coming off too uppity, even in my private journal, but who is that serving? Why do I need to put reigns on my hope? There will forever be ups and downs, and the human condition will never allow me to be free of personal shortcomings, but now the understanding has finally made some lasting imprint on me (I hope) that I may always come back to.