On Familiarity

Call it continuity; recognizing that the meaning of a place will continue to deepen for you. That's what it feels like here. Every time I light the sage, or pass that corner, or the way I felt the angle of the high sun on my breastbone. You know the feeling when you come to an understanding with the path that's been underneath your feet, and all of a sudden it rises to meet you. And for a glimpse of 4:00 when you take your first bite of solid food all day, because you're running strong and haven't had the time to be weighted down, or the dawn that breaks overs your skylight because lonesome mornings excite you now, or knowing exactly which key to use and pushing the heavy door open against a dark and pulsing night. For a moment a slice of your life is extracted from the stream of consciousness and you get to hold it in your hands, and turn it over and sigh and say, oh yes- this is a fragment of the flow.... this is when that stone deepens significance in the stairway, and now that door, this key, the stick of sage, is even more a part of me, and this story, than it ever was before-
and the world turns slightly so the kitchen never really was facing east, we've always been bound westward it may suddenly seem, and you're never quite the same again.

Each glance of this city's story adds another layer of what I will someday recall.
I can't describe it more directly than this.

I was sitting on the stone in the courtyard at my first weekly Wednesday potluck when I thought, oh yes, this will continue, and I'll sit here again someday soon, and the stone will look even more familiar. And one loose fray curled around the outside of my understanding will now be cut away, a clarity seeps in, and I'll remember how I felt the first time, and I may even know when the next time will be.

Each room we occupy, and each thought that contains us, and each person we are retained within, we leave a part of ourselves there waiting for us, only to swing by unexpectedly at some point near or far down the line (that is inconsequential), and oh yes, here I was, and pick ourselves up from the schoolyard, to be more richly defined by the places we once were, and the places we are, and the places we will be again....