June 12, 2026
You know that quiet before the storm rises in you and shows you what you are going to make a noise about?
There you are on deck, facing the sea, sensing the winds are about to change, but with no idea from which direction they are going to come.
Or how strong they will be. Or how big. Whether the boat will stand the impact. Whether you will. You don’t know.
All you sense is that what is coming means a change of direction.
cha cha change. And unlike Robert Redford in that movie where he only speaks like five sentences as he is drowning or trying not to, you are not going to proceed in silence. You are not going to live this experience in silence.
Hell no.
Unreasonable
This came to me while I was talking with someone who, when I said something was about to change, immediately offered me some very reasonable next steps. Practical. Sensible. Aisa. Asi. Like that.
And I nodded.
Yup, I nodded.
But later what came to me was:
No.
I don’t want that.
I want to go deeper into that moment on the deck. Into the absolute stillness where something fast-fast can emerge, as my grandmother might have said.
Fast fast new new.
Impulse Convulse Repeat
It may seem that I follow all my impulses—ones that really move me—but I do so with a lot of ambivalence. Mistrust. Anxiety. Worry. I’ve lived with one foot in, one foot out. Making convulsive decisions impulsively. One part of myself acting before the other side can react and stop me.
But lately, there have been moments.
Like when I called the Legacy sites in Montgomery, Alabama, where I have been dying to go since the pandemic.
While everything else is breaking apart, Bryan Stevenson keeps building things there that remind us that civil disobedience lives here. Lived here. I gotta go. So I called.
All I was doing was asking the attendant who answered about the nearest hotels. I found myself tearing up.
Because she had asked my name and given me hers right after we started talking.
But also because I kept waiting for the part of me that rushes in and says noooooo.
All I heard was Pin drop silence, as the nuns in my childhood would have said.
"Hello?" she was still on the phone as I had my yes/no crises. “Are you still there?”
“Yes,” I said. Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.
Wine in the Gazebo aka the new journey beckons
Once you start speaking what you really feel, it gets harder to stop the journey. The body is used to the path being open and so all the rivers begin to run.
You may prefer to languish in a gazebo in the garden sipping wine, but the river is not having it. It rushes in. It breaks the white wooden lattice. It pulls down the climbing roses.
And before you know it, water is everywhere.
You have to put down that whine—sorry, wine (jaja)—and go with it. Into the unknown.
Fools Rush in (is actually the name of a rom com)
Self-expression keeps pulling you out of your comfort zone into places you did not plan to go.
True self-expression comes from beyond you. It is not only yours. It does not care whether it is convenient. It is not waiting to make an appointment. It is not knocking politely at the door. It rushes to your door like you want lovers in movies to rush in.
Never mind you are not ready for company. Or that you are in your pajamas. Not that satin number or even the plaid one. No—you are wearing that ratty nightshirt you only wear when you are alone. The one with an oil stain over the right breast and holes in the sides that you will not get rid of.
Do you open the door?
