T-699: Be With It

Wes came bouncing in a little while ago, soaked to the bone.  He had cycled to the Mass General Auditions earlier in the evening.  As it had all day, as it had been predicted, thunderstorms came rolling in. 

While I was pacing the floor and anxiously calling his cell phone, Wes was blithely cycling home in the rain and dark.

When he arrived, he was ebullient.  I told him I would have come and picked him up.  Why didn't he have his phone on?  I was worried.

He didn't quite laugh at me, but almost.  The rain was warm, the night quiet; he knew the way home.  It was clear he was going to get wet, but so what.  That's all that was going to happen.  He was going to get wet.

My worry was a form of rank chicken wimpery--- a kind of piddling fear of the ordinary that is part and parcel of modern life that makes us feel so small and jittery.  It keeps us from joy, from being.

Abike, you are where you are.  It is necessary to just be with it.  Feel the heat if its hot, the wet if it rains, the dark if its night.  Living in our modern boxes of cars, offices, and homes where all the air is still and warm and utterly predictable, I have forgotten the exhilaration of experience.

I remember riding my bike in a ferocious storm.  At first, I was huddled and hurrying against it.  It soon became clear that I was not going to get home before the storm let up.  The best I could do was let go.  It wasn't long before I could enjoy it.  I drove screamingly into puddles, my legs akimbo, with the audacity of an eight year old. 

In my current life, I am an excessively cerebral and emotional person.  I create and live in challenges that tax those two functions.  Being outside, living outside, as one does while abike on tour, has always reminded me to be in my body, be with my body.

I am amazed and jealous of people who seem to be fully in-carn-ated.  They are "in the state of being in their body."  I know we all are in our bodies all the time, but I have learned to shut that transmission line down. How often have I come up from some deep engagement and realize I have been holding my back and shoulders rigid to the point of stiffness.  As I write that now, I remember to release the hunch in my upper back.

What's worse is that I LIKE being physical.  I like being in movement, especially rhythmic movement like swimming, or cycling, or walking.  But I don't do it with any regularity when I live in the city.  Is it because I don't value it?  Is it because I let my sloth and my fear create a toxic stew of inhibition?  Is it because I am overly committed to being productive nearly ever moment of my life and walking...even though I like and it is doing me good....does not feel productive?

Well, that's a rotten form of  putrid delusion.  Let's hear a prayer for the end of petty fears and foolish inhibitions.  I was told years ago by my best friend's father, who though drunk, was right.  I was running to get out of a little sprinkle of  rain.  He laughed at me and said, "I don't know why you're running away.  You're not so sweet you'll melt."    As they say in Detroit, "True that."   I haven't melted yet, but I have surely avoided the rain like I might.  Enough.