Have you ever fit so particularly snuggly into a moment of yesterday that you could not help but wake up today not eager to expand into something larger but insistent upon shrinking back into the exact perfection of yesterday only to be disappointed, albeit not surprised, to find that yesterday’s perfect fit could never possibly be today’s?

I tend to do this thing where I try to pause and capture all the goodness across which I happen with the sweet intention of cloning the moment. And I have found myself so disappointed by the inadequacy of what I concoct the second time around that I have resolved to let all the things be the things, exactly as they are;

As I venture back to the US to start a new old job, this practice feels especially challenging.

I am trying to try less, essentially.

What is also tangibly true to me, though, is that the thing is not ever really just the thing at all.

I love to photograph food. Today I came across a dark photo of mine in which three empty deli containers sit atop one empty packet of roasted edamame beans, all neatly stacked nearby the bright yellow curb upon which I sat to enjoy this hodgepodge of a meal. As soon as I looked at the photo I remembered the faces of the people who passed me to enter the shop, each on her or his or their way to wherever they were going. I remembered my bare feet on the pedals of the bike that got me to the shop and where I watched the sunset that evening and the moment I laid my head to rest that night because it was my last night in a place I’ll never forget. I swiped up to read that I had, in that moment, captioned that photo, “last supper.”

Today I chuckled as it occurred to me that this photo means food is never just food and the thing is never just the thing.

A buttermilk rusk is actually daybreak around last night’s leftover coals. Fresh sourdough is actually a miraculously pink sky. A fig straight from the tree is a rainy day on the coast of the North Island with my mother and salted popcorn in a cast-iron pot is a lion’s roar as the full moon shines on my father.

so

I’ve still got lots to learn about letting the thing be the thing

but I’m trying

promise

xx

P.S. I hope to one day find the courage to publish the things I am at present terrified to see on paper, let alone speak aloud. For now, my act of integrity involves meeting myself here, now, and forgiving myself for not yet knowing the words for the painful pangs of this chapter of my life.

Note to future self: this self is riding a particularly uncomfortable patch; she is feeling lonely and scared and, in the form of full-body hives, her body is sending her the message that she needs to pay some serious attention to the memories from which she has for far too long been running. While I urge you to be gentle, I hope you are working toward excavating the deep stuff.