The Sun

It’s a time of new beginnings, I felt today during my walk/jog through the park.  The blue sky looked like it came from a box of crayons.  The insane sun was hot.  Really hot.  That’s what made it so insane.  How can something so far away still penetrate that much heat on to the single organism that is me.  I guess it’s kind of like Love.  Something so abstract can truly give you the warmest of picnic days and can also surprise you with burnt skin that glows like sienna embers.  After having experienced the joy of love and the heat of love lost, I know now to not be afraid of getting hurt.  For a while these past few months I’ve been afraid of getting hurt again.  But now, I feel like it’s okay to be vulnerable again.  Not just with a lover, but with work, with friends and with creative expression.  I have a couple-friend who recently broke up and one of them is going through many of the motions I, myself, went through 9 months ago.  I say the same cliche crap to him that everyone said to me – and by all means I believe every word of it – but I guess it’ll just take it’s own course in his heart for him to know his strength and sit still feeling the burn.  

And so all this was what I was thinking about during my jog.  There’s this part at the park where the stretch of road ahead looks so long.  I wanted to stop and walk it, but I didn’t let myself.  I just took tiny jogging steps – one at a time – “make it to the lamp post” I thought.  Then, “Okay, now make it to that trash can…  then to that homeless person sitting on the bench.”  Now “Make it to that patch of flowers.”  And so, I did.  I jogged down that stretch of pathway.  I really didn’t want to.  But I was so glad I did when I made it to my goal.  And I guess it was symbolic in a way to jog past the flowers and the homeless man and the heat of the sun that both burns and brightens.  Life is so chalk full of the Yin and Yang of existence.  As I get older, I realize that life is kind of tough when you are forging your own identity, not just basing who you are on your childhood, your family, your country, your neighborhood, your looks.  It’s emotional and scary and wonderful and exciting!  And I guess as a soon-to-be 27-year-old, I can see that I need to hold myself accountable to who I am and who I want to be.  And I guess that’s one of the reasons I wanted to take control of my weight.  The stars weren’t already aligned to say I had to live the rest of my life overweight.  They might say that I’ll always have to watch it.  Genetically.  Biologically.  Emotionally.  But nowhere does it say anything in stone.  About anything, really.  Who I’ll fall in love with next.  Who I’ll marry.  How long it’ll take me to eventually complete a Marathon.  If my ex and I will ever be friends.  How long I’ll live in Atlanta.  If an African-American man will be the next President.  What my next Photography series will be.  If it’ll rain tomorrow.  How I will change the world, starting from within.

So much possibility in the air today.  Maybe it’s because Obama got the Nomination and to me, this is going to create new Karma.  Maybe it’s because I am almost down 50 pounds – something I just never thought possible.  And if I can make it down 50…by God…I can make it to 100!  Maybe it’s because I am helping someone with their own breakup, not my own, an emotional strength that I have been waiting for.  Maybe it was the color of the sky.  The city’s skyline on the green hill.  My feet going slowly…but going nonetheless. 

The only thing I guess that I know right now is that I am here.  I am arriving.  

Nowhere.  (Look Closely)  Now Here.