May I tell you about the stars and everything that followed?
I kiss red lipstick on for the crescent moon, the constellations, the galaxies.
We depart for the mountain at dusk. Dusk here mirrors the soul-luring pace of these tiny West Texas towns: unhurried illumination.
The yawning light gathers the mountains, the plains, all the contents, impressions, feelings of the day and lets them be honestly seen in their lively uniqueness before surrendered to black night.
I bask in the dusk.
I eagerly offer my crowded stories to the streams of wind, to the fading sun. My prayer is to empty out so I can vibrantly and fully feel this fleeting moment of my life.
In the emptying, there’s the creation of space, an echo of these plains. I stretch my heart wider and wider to embrace and drench every cell of my being with this beauty that gives breath.
I ache to dissolve into this dusk.
I yearn to instill the essence of this steady sunset into the universe of my cells because I like who I am here.
Playfulness, inspiration, deep ease come naturally to me here. I walk in perpetual reverence. I speak and act from a secured, overflowing well of sacred confidence.
I am strong in my loving here.
My spirit comfortably settles into my body, and my spirit exudes from my skin.
In the desert, my breath flows like water. In childlike wonder, I marvel at the sensation of dusty earth rising to meet my feet. I reside so often in my heart and in my head, I drift above the physical experience of living and moving in the entirety of the body.
But in Marfa, in the exquisite majesty of the far west, I am life.
And the spirited tides of the wind nurture my roots with rekindled truths that enliven this life-force.
In a landscape described to be unforgiving, I find kindness, and the warmth of the locals startles me and I discover the depth of my thirst.
In a town that unapologetically keeps its own hours and takes sweet and purposeful strides, I relinquish the modern urgency addicted to proving and going, and release back into the internal rhythms to wisely guide.
In a car ride at dusk, adventuring upward to a star-gazing party, I realize my wholeness. In awe of the grand vastness, my heart-tugs into an expanded realization of my own wholeness, a human self not designed to be perfected or improved, but deeply and fiercely loved. The magic of transformation exists in the softening.
May I tell you about the stars and everything that followed?
I’m still lingering in the mystical aura of Marfa when I transition back to Austin. I carry the West Texas style back to the city and prop a sunhat on top of hair still tangled from long drives.
I sit tall as I reread the email that leaps off the screen in finger-pointing rage. The words are fangs, a biting personal attack for a decision I made, and this is a debated decision that chooses my well-being, honors the preciousness of my time. My NO triggers an explosive reaction in her, and for a moment, I relapse into people-pleasing, squandering my energy and sacrificing power, and then STOP.
I breathe myself back to the clarity that is the unobstructed views of the plains. I receive a jolt of resiliency, like the electric pink lightning that partied in the sky on that Monday night. I merge grace with the grit, like the cacti in bloom, and with wind-swept honesty, I discern in a long sigh: this is unkind, this harms my peace.
And my peace is worthy of protecting and nurturing.
Self-respect. The stars, the soil, the otherworldly winds of that Marfa stay enforce a grounded return to self-respect.
Self-respect rockets me to shine forward like that falling star the crowd gasps and cheers at as we gaze and trace constellations and ponder galaxies.
Courage to blaze. Courage to claim the consequences of my actions. And choose myself anyway.
Looking up the dark heavens prompts all the pettiness to fall down and fall and fall away. On top of the mountain, the crescent moon casts a lovely glow and I sober up to what’s important in this remarkably rapid life that is only a blink in this universe that infinitely spins.
These revelations remain close. They revitalize decisions that emanate and align with that feeling of unbridled aliveness once and now forever felt through that destined journey at dusk into the starry horizon of the west.