There is a random thing that makes me wildly joyful. Coming into a coffee shop or another public place and hearing a song from my own playlist. This feeling of serendipity, of instant connection, of being known by the universe, of being present in a particular time and place, of seeing my own soul in the mirror of reality lasts long after the song is over. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for days. This tiny little coincidence is so important to me (precisely because it always comes unbidden and I have no way to make it happen) that I can tell exactly how many times it happened this year (three, including today), where and when it happened and what the songs were. I’ve been struggling to articulate what belonging looks like… but here it is – a drop of pure, concentrated belonging dropped into the apple pie of my reality.

Speaking of articulation, i’ve had the weirdest and most wonderful conversation with someone who was terribly late and terribly apologetic (also, terribly young and terribly wise and sad for their age). We were both rambling and feeling that we were saying too much and nothing (they literally apologized every time they spoke). It made me think of butterflies. We struggle to put things into words to make ourselves understood, to make sense of ourselves, but the moment we do it we confine the complexity of what is going on to the limits of our language. We pin the butterfly. The pinned butterfly is still beautiful, we can admire it up close and for a length of time, but it’s dead. The magic that made its wings flutter is gone. This leaves me with question of how do we leave things intentionally unsaid. How do we create space for preverbal. A home for our ancient and powerful selves that don’t know how to use PowerPoint, but can communicate with spirit.

Part of my conversation script these days is asking people what they are hopeful about, so I did that. They answered, or rather rambled the way we were rambling all along and then they surprised me by saying: What about you? What are you hopeful about? I am not used to people flipping the script on me in this manner, so I panicked. Because, God, this question seems so simple when you ask it and so impossible to answer when someone asks you. I thought about home and the three years of war and the growing separation with so many friends lis and the dying ecosystems and about my children and about my cat who died last autumn and I said, truthfully, that even when things are dying you can still love them. And this gives me hope.