always trust your cape

The woods are calling me like the sound of silence after a siren, or breakfast after a night of sleep. I dread staying in but the seasonal sniffle has entered through the front door of my home — leaving me with body aches and an endless desire to lie flat in the bathtub. I want to run to the place where pine trees meet the stars and sit in the slowness that rests in every forest, but I must stay here and bathe here until I begin to feel better. I know when the clouds do part and the sun replaces the warmth of this fever, I will belong to springtime.

When you fall ill, there are very few things you can do. One of them is to rest in your bed while the day finds you paddling a lifeboat to shore. You keep taking in water with every cough but being a living and breathing thing — you keep fighting until you overcome the waves and find yourself on land again. As you begin, the land looks far away as if you're looking at it through a snow globe. Your arms get tired. Your heart thumps like a drum. You're so quick to forget why you desperately need the land for living. Surviving requires ambition and ambition can knock your knees blue before it sets you free. This is the way life has always been, but the fight can be magnified ten times the size whenever sickness comes creeping into your life. Sickness like heartache or failure brings with it — lessons.

This one tells me that an ordinary day should never be called boring. I spend many of my days like a bare bed sheet, still and quiet even though my heart is that of a river, traveling and seeking what is unknown. I write of the forest, but I don't visit it whenever I want to. I speak of the wildfire that shows in my eyes if only somebody would look, but I wait for them to. I vow to rest today because my body tells me I will feel worse if I don't, so I listen.

Sometimes, I stop listening. How could that be? Even when the clouds part and I reach the shore where life meets metaphor, I should listen. In my listening, I will remember how troubled a day can be when one falls ill, how tiring the constant paddling for tomorrow can be, and how sweet the taste of reaching the fruits of your ambition are. If I am to belong in this world, I should make it a world for me by visiting the woods when they call, being less timid in sharing my stories or songs, and giving myself the freedom to realize how beautiful an ordinary day can be.

 outfit details: modcloth dress, mum's shoes & cape, carter's hat

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