I am not ready to talk more about how I feel about my son. Instead, I seem to be leaning towards talking about nudity instead. Sleeping nude to be specific. I have endeavored to be transparent, raw, naked. And I will, but I am not ready to give up that intimacy just yet. I need to hold it to me, privately a little longer. Not all thoughts and feelings need be shared immediately. I find that they morph and change when held close, private and tend to marinate into something other than what they appear at first blush.
I spent the day yesterday wandering in ancient woods, where every surface covered with a soft greenness that felt like a lovely hug. I breathed in air that fired up my lungs with oxygen and opened them up with air, tiny sacks deep within my lungs released from the staleness of deprivation. Alaska, begs your lungs take in more oxygen and breathe new life into themselves, invigorated and almost bursting with life giving breath. It is a heady feeling to be high on oxygen. I like it.
I also overdosed on candy yesterday just to be sure that I am not giving off an impression that lacks authenticity. I walked in dense, lush forests, around mountain lakes, and ocean shores, but I also ate my weigh in candy yesterday, eating my feelings for sure.
I am paying for the detour down addiction lane today . I feel sluggish and out of sorts. My internal organs feel swollen and distended by the inflammation caused by eating a fuck ton of candy. My head hurts because too much sugar makes me feel awful. And yet, I know this and did it anyway. Perhaps I will never be well, completely relieved of my self destructive ways, but I have gotten better. I have limited the scope of things to take me out. Yesterday it was candy. Today, I am hoping to just sit with the feelings instead of pushing them down in an avalanche of toxic sugar.
I had a lovely day: three hour ferry ride complete with orcas and dolphins, a hike at the ocean’s edge with fern overload and a muted filter on life, me and my feelings. Lunch at the Cape Fox Inn which never disappoints. A London Fog at the New York Cafe which always leaves me feeling cared for and comforted. Just being in the space, the old bar with age worn mirror, almost like a friendly embrace from a long ago removed friend. Another hike around Ward Lake. A lush indulgence into the flora and fauna that abounds here. I fell into bed last night at the very late hour of 9 pm. Sun still shining and darkness nowhere to be seen.
It is weird to go to sleep in the light and wake up in the light. Like darkness is this elusive lover that you are just missing but lack the commitment to stalk. I find myself longing for the dark, while knowing all too well that living here provides an equal abundance of darkness but just not in the balance of any day. No, here darkness and light each have their season. Tis the season of lightness now. Which since I didn’t participate in the darkness season, feels like a little too much light.
But I digress. I started off wanting to talk about nakedness. The freedom of eschewing clothing and, more particularly, pajamas. Being able to be naked, and alone. Last night I just wanted to be unencumbered. Free of entanglements and not penned in at all. No binding clothing, soft or harsh. Nothing confining me whatsoever. I seemed to need the freedom that only nakedness provides.
I lay in bed watching old movies. The Apartment and Irma La Douce. I fell asleep during Irma so I can only guess what happened...Irma is redeemed by her benevolent police officer who loves a hooker with a heart of gold. Why is there a part of me that wishes that Irma would have fought to extricate herself from the clutches of men, any men?
I feel like that myself I guess. Grateful to not be tethered to any man. Free to do as I please and be away from the influence and pall of testosterone. I do not hate men, but I find their absence right now needed. The tumultuous living with it draining and terrifying on some level. Always the threat of some sort of violence I cannot evade. My son is gone and that feels ok right now. I guess I am still recovering from the trauma that was his brief stay at home.
And perhaps that is what all my femaleness last night was about. A reclamation of myself as a woman, no longer tied to being a mother and proper. I could be wild and natural and free to roam about my hotel room naked and unmoored from my usual existence. I don’t know, but I slept well and hard. Waking a few times but I always sleep better naked, it is almost like clothing creates some sort of vapor lock between me and the world, but when I sleep in the nude, I am free to go to places, even only in my dreams that transport me to places where clothing can only be a barrier, denying me entrance to those closed off hidden places within myself.
I long to be free to find a cabin deep within the woods and to spend time there alone, naked, with a blanket and tea. London fogs all day long while water splashes on the window. Fire burning in the fireplace, me, solitary with only the glow of my skin in the firelight and a book in my hand, reading, cuddled up naked with just myself.
Funny how much naked’s concept and ideals have changed for me. I used to only pair naked with men. But as I age toward crone and away from maid and matron, naked becoming something that is new to me again, disassociated with its previous identity with sex and men and sharing.
Naked now becoming something that is all my own. Just for me. Not a rapacious undoing in the heat of passion but instead a quiet reclamation of my body, my sex and myself. Middle age is a weird place where I still feel shackled to the adultness of my life but with an increasing whimsy of youth that blows through my life like a summer squall on the open seas. Leaving me in the aftermath spent but invigorated. Able to use the excitement over time instead of wasting it all in the momentary fervor.
And perhaps that is what changes with age, there is still that need to hurry up, but it is chastened by an amusement of the moment, where the invitation to dwell and dally becomes more present and alive. Each moment passing like an old friend gone too soon. Wisdom teaching that there is no need to clutch and claw. It is only time that wastes away...not the self. The self remains long after time erodes.
I am here but gone. Naked in my self, pulling inward with an outward show, except there is no one to see it. To chuckle or be amused, to be lit up or desired. It is just me, with all this nakedness. Lying alone in my own bed, not really sexy, not really not. Trying to answer the riddle of whether or not I can just be sexy to myself and if so, what does that even mean? Do I want me? And if I do, am I willing to share it with a man? The longer I am alone, the less and less I think so. Finding the men that come into my life, not worthy or brave enough to make it worth my while.
An eagle soars out my window as the waves lap the shore in a steady rhythm. I remain naked while writing out myself. Wringing myself out with each word that I enter on the page. Finding some newness in my oldness. And finding solace and comfort with myself, even in this aging body that no one seems interested in anymore. And somehow, all this lack of interest, makes me more interested and willing to bare it all, unafraid to look into the mirrors in my hotel. To see what time and candy has done to my body. And to find it beautiful and amazing all the same. Even while I can’t help pick it apart as well.
There is a freedom in my willingness to be naked, and alone. And that seems to be reinforcing. The time for nudity ever present and real, calling me to remember this when I get home. How much more myself I feel when naked. Regardless of how offensive it may be to others. I enjoy it more because somehow with the passage of time, the hard mothering days drawing more closed, this has somehow created an openness, a portal if you will, back to my maiden days where my body was less my own. But with today’s mind, and today’s flesh, I am reborn again if only to myself. And that seems to be enough and too much at the same time...again.
Another cup of coffee beckons to be consumed while naked standing at the doorway to myself, laid bare again for closer examination and hopefully, love. Seeing that perhaps the best love story ever is the one you have with yourself while you are busy trying to get something going with someone else. The host body full and supporting, reveling in the nakedness that feels indulgent with advancing years. I drink it all up and lie in repose, naked, alone and unafraid for the moment. Content to rest right here.
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