I drive down hometown roads at twilight, curiously empty of emotional history. There is wind, a landscape that could catch and tug at memories, but the memories have faded and the feeling behind the memories recycled into a learning that informs my current iteration.
I suspect that I introspect so strongly while I am in my moods and my phases that nostalgia fails to tempt me. I’ve appreciated and forgiven, repeatedly, the persons I once was, and lived in lush gratitude, and when despair visited, I grieved until the sadness washed out my heart, and when joy sparked, I immersed myself in that spirited aliveness.
This is home.
This is how I wish and choose to visit my home: in an emptiness that heart-shimmers in presence.
In this emptiness I see you – I see you in all your mystery, humanity, uniqueness of being.
In this emptiness I see myself – freed and rooted, boundaried and expressive, worthy and watching.
This is my homecoming practice: to be refreshed and revived in the present. A practiced emptiness so I am untangled from the projection of perceptions, so I can pierce through the shadow of the past distorting the real and the now, and I can strengthen the muscle to access compassionate understanding.
The sky here is empty, a rejuvenating blueness. And I keep noticing vultures. And these elegant and dark-winged royalty keep noticing me.
We have a morning routine. I wake early to go the water, and dive deep and swim strong strokes alone.
I write while I sun dry. I drift upward to gaze at trees in the last hurrah of summer, some tease of the coming of fall, and there’s the reassuring presence of my grandmother in the wind murmuring through the pines.
This is home. There is love here. And I can perceive and receive it without dizzying myself with conjuring and painting in memories. She’s here. I’m here.
And the vultures are here. They circle high in a dash of clear blue sky.
These queens and kings do not flap their wings; they glide on currents invisible to me. There’s no stressful effort in their soaring, they attune to the wind and flow.
Trust. Beauty in surrender. Mesmerizing and graceful movement.
“Goodness,” she tells me after listening to my heart-stories, “you have no idea how I love you so.”
This is beyond a mere mirage of a memory. This is a potent truth realized and rocketed through the core of my being.
Loved.
You are loved.
You are lovable.
You are loving.
This is my Kentucky. This resurrection of truths, this morning commune with vultures who are messengers of death and life, offering a searing epiphany of the wastefulness of forcing, stressing, over-analyzing, fear-constricted living.
Circles. Cycles. Death. Rebirth.
My Kentucky life, my Texas life dances in those orbits.
I’ll leave here renewed in a truth, a kindness that is my Kentucky, that is the nurturance and protection of my family, and follow a pronounced soul-call that urges me back to Texas.
I will drive down the familiar curve of city roads, heart-brimming with emotional history. The sky will enthrall me in whips of clouds wistful and lavish in pinks and lavender-greys. And my prayer will be to stay clear, to live in the truth uncovered in Kentucky that I am loved and am loving, and with love I can relax into a trust that invites less propelling and much more gliding.