Violets in the Sunshine

On a morning, in November.

Gray light diffuses across the early morning sky; a storm is swelling like a spell.

In the quiet hours of the soul, with the wind racing itself through the clouds, I find a certain kind of permission in myself to become deeply aware.

Aware of the land, the soil, the stone that stretches beyond my blanketed body. Of the ryegrass, green and dancing through the patchwork fields. Of the ocean, so close to me that salt lingers in the wind, and the bewitching ferocity of its waves upon the cliffsides. This place is new to me, still. Unknown to me, still, beyond where my limited footsteps have taken me.

Now, the season has begun to slip into darkness, like two hands gently closing their embrace around the candle of the day. There is a comfort to it, to the rhythms of life slowing their pace and curling inwards, but the autumn here wears an unfamiliar face. It’s softer than I am used to, smiles less with the winter’s sharp teeth. But that, too, is a comfort. The sunlight still feels warm.

There are moments that I don’t know what to feel. I am cross legged in the valley of my own peace and yet holding the awareness of the destruction it took to get here. I don’t feel as though I left my life behind, because it doesn’t remain behind me. It’s not there at all, that life; the one I spent years crafting, loving, nurturing, shaping, creating, pouring myself into. Getting here meant taking an axe to it and selling off all the pieces. I showed up to this newness with two suitcases and my convictions. What a wild thing to do, but how grateful I am for such wildness.

In the village where I live, the tall, moss-strewn ruins at its center belong to hundreds and hundreds of jackdaws, rooks, and crows. When they fly together, they steal the sky, eddying the air with the sweep of their wings and raucous calls. To stand beneath their impossible numbers feels like being poured into the river of this land’s wild spirit. It is a potent magic to be just a small, beating heart beneath the beating of their wings.

Lately, I feel like I have stepped through some gossamer portal, peeling away the cobwebs that had settled on a once young dream. Writing held such a secret space in the years of my life, an act of quiet necessity. To pull it out now into the daylight feels utterly vulnerable, but in doing so, I also feel as though some small spark within me has finally found a way to breathe. There is incredible importance in the power of choice, and discomfort, and throwing yourself into the tides of change, washing clean of the stagnation, of standing small before your fears and defiantly saying yes.

This world is a radiant and rugged terrain, and we have this one mad and magical chance to experience it. I don’t know about you, but I plan to do just that.