When this all began—the quarantine, the spiritual journeys, the experimental cooking, the come-to-Jesus racial reckonings—I professed the desire to transcend, to find Truth and Light, to drift above like a cloud, touching those thinner membranes of the earth that easily burst into that easily obtained nirvana of peace, meditation, warm teas. Instead I see the cloud as a child’s lost balloon nearly popped, wild, confused, far from where it should be. And the balloon itself would be Light, and those thin membranes Light, and the currents of air Light, and child down below Light, and the earth and the honeysuckle and the lightning bugs and the barking dogs and the warped fences and the downtown squares and the empty pedestals and the mosquitos and the wood bees and the dancing elderly and the blooming lonesome tulips of the Arboretum—all Light, all beyond, all god. My leg is my leg, a part of me; when broken or in peak condition, it is still “Sean.” Everything is that Light we struggle to find, even when the shadows in our hearts make everything seem so dim. Looking outside yourself, outside the earth for Light is like turning away from the fire in search of heat. I am learning to kiss myself on the mouth instead, trying to let the Light transcend from my own throat.
