dear god not another Year of Reflection

but i will gladly take a gift or two

it’s already 9 in the morning but the air is still crisp. just two mornings ago i was blanketed in beads of sweat while on the farm at this hour. now i’m blanketed in a green oversized sweatshirt bejeweled with vibrant fungi flowers made of terry cloth and i can’t remember the last time i’ve walked in the forest wearing socks. my unaccustomed summer skin is trembling for the added warmth of a scarf or a hat. like usual, i greet the forest. i am thankful that i’ve managed to beat much of the saturday crowd, for now. passing leaves are beginning to cover the trail, hurdling themselves from their current homes as they twirl their way to new ones, saying hasta luego at just the right time with the elegant grace of a ballet dancer. i walked out of my only ballet class when i was 5. i never knew a graceful exit.

“how painful walking barefoot will be when all the dangers are hidden underneath a bed of leaves,” i think to myself and then i think of all the pain i may have caused others by leaving.

can i learn to exit gracefully?

i find a secluded spot along the river and sit beneath the canopy of an old tree. a singular leaf falls into the river and a perfect halo ripples around it. surely the leaf goes to heaven for such a sacrifice. the cycle of Life Death Life. is heaven Death? or is heaven More Life? for me, heaven is Now. Now is watching a leaf fall into a river with a poetry book on my lap feeling the Earth around me changing and knowing something within me is changing too. the light of the sun is bouncing off the water but to me it looks more like a raving party of stars dancing amongst themselves, laughing hysterically at the way their brilliance ✨ reflects ✨ so erratically here on earth. stars with their whole ‘supernova’ explosion taking a few billion years to die thing didn’t learn to exit gracefully either. their style, grandiose🌟

oh, and speaking of reflections

it’s been 1 year since i started this newsletter!! i’m not big on birthdays but i’m trying to change that. i’m also not big on My Year in Review things and tbh i’ve always considered them pretty corny which probably means i should give it a second look. naturally, we’ll call this an anti-reflection…

this newsletter was technically born on sept 9 as everything and nothing but i sent out my first full-length love letter on sept 20. yes, leave it to me to create vagueness around an anniversary. like i said, this is something that i’m working on but since i’m sharing this intimate weekly ritual with you i would be remiss not to mention our big “One Year” ! one hiatus, one name change, and a few consistent newsletters later we are celebrating our first birthday together and only a few days late hehe. as i anti-reflect on the year all i can say is i’m certainly not fit to share tips on discipline or showing up or committing or any of those things but that’s also a large part of the reason i’m even doing any of this in the first place. changing its name to the anti-experience gave me permission to do this whole thing the way that i wanted to; in it’s ever-evolving manner and in the way i’ve always preferred my art best- messy, imperfect, uncurated, honest. i like to think i’m in the majority here. how do you like your Expressions, dear anti-Reader?

i’ve had quite a few firsts with you all this year and i’m thankful for the space you’ve afforded me to see that. without it, it can be easy for me to think i’ve done nothing. a feeling of worthlessness seems to be floating around these days but we choose what to do with that feeling. it’s so easy to get tricked into thinking that you always need more of something to be whole or ready or successful. the other day i met a 30 year old man who has always wanted to travel but never quite felt “ready” so has never left the country. oh, the illusion of readiness!!

i never longed for a career or a specific university or extraordinary achievement awards or any of these shiny medals that our parents may discern as valuable. when i was little what i wanted was to see the world and share what i saw. i thought that it would be a panacea of sorts. that sharing stories, backgrounds, experiences would somehow weave us all back together by showing us that we actually aren’t all that different from one another. to be clear, i still think that but in high school i thought that meant i should study journalism. so i did but i didn’t have to because what i wanted to be when i grew up had nothing to do with a career. i never wanted “to be” anything else and my gifts couldn’t flourish in sterile institutions. how can we pedestalize a certain idea of success when success is only relative? in talking to the Man That Never Left [the country] i realized that i had made Little Lex’s dream come true. when you’re playing The Game there’s always more to seek out, more to gain, to desire, that’s all part of it.

but maybe if you take yourself out of the game and back into yourself, just for a little while, you’ll remember that you’re already out here making all of your wildest dreams come true.

you rock

💋

have a look at the progress before you go

baby me feeding a squirrel

grown me hanging on a boulder the other day