a body godly
The appetite of a body awakening; feasting on the sensual presence.
Hello lovely ones,
In four days, I will be traveling back to Ontario to spend a little time with family. It has been six long and nourishing months, allowing my body to be recalibrated by the soft, familiar soil of Calgary. A former home, a forever love. Arriving in January, I did not know I would still be here in June, and if I had any recollection then, I may have never booked the flight in the first place. But Lord, how glad I am that I did. How glad I am for every whispered notion, every small invitation, that leads to the places and people I needed most.
My gratitude to you — dear mountain city, and people of my heart.
These have been exquisite plains to be held by, and while my body has nestled into the crook of well-acquainted arms, my spirit has had space enough to dream and wander and imagine what could be coming next; when these arms open and let me fall again into uncertainty.
And so, I continue on! I will merge again with the pathless path until I find another body to hold me. (That’s code for: no, I don’t have a plan beyond my summer travels, for all who keep asking.)
Until then,
lvs
a body godly
I wake up late and in a fog. The sleeping pill I took last night filled my body with a quiet flow of unplugged feeling. Vibrating with activity. Endless undetectable motion. Falling, I felt I was falling. My mind stayed on the pillow while my body fell into the subliminal space between consciousness. It’s familiar resting place: the wistful and always-waiting-for-me middle world.
Hunger erupts from me as I peel myself from the sheets, damp with sweat. Sitting on two stacked yoga blocks at the coffee table, my senses reflect on baked purple Japanese yams filling the space with a soft earthy scent, sweet from the inside of their bellies. It is the smell of nature laughing, an essence joyfully consumed. My skin is tingling: for the yams, for the eggs I’ve poached—white vinegar still in the air—the yolk running over onto the plate and the sides of my mouth. A layered convergence, a purple bed with deep orange sheets. I lay myself down onto it.
A decorative candle I’ve had since 2020 is waxing whimsically as it pools onto the table great echoes of white, sweeping the ground like a veil behind a bride. There was no reason to keep carrying it around, so I took a match to the wick on my birthday. Friends who recognized it did a double take, asking if that was—indeed—the unburnable candle? Not anymore. Now it is an offering from a past I’ve been holding too tightly onto, on fire, evaporating.
Love is letting it melt into nothing.
Love is letting all the candles burn.
Love is licking the plate.
Love is being devoured completely.
Today I am two closed rings connected to infinity, fixed at the centre of the altar. Sturdy and covered in dust.
Today I am a pool of living sorrow melting into many streams, all things I hoped for turning into rivers, everyone I loved is water that I bathe in, all is becoming one.
Put your hands around this god body; tightly coalescing until we are unified.
God is compassionate presence.
I stand to exercise my rebellion against numbness; against the rot; against the couch; against indifference. Wailing at the feet of a six year old melting candle, her dying wish is that I would give myself completely and entirely; everything to this holy hour.
Gillian sends a song in a group chat, we play it in circles so the body has a rhythm to imitate. My torso and hips, my mind and heart, each are being wound back into place, like a screw connecting two distinct parts.
God leads in whispers and trails unseen, down to the water. To the edges of the known and into the infinite awareness of love permeating through all things. Everything is an instrument of wisdom; even this body of mine twisting awkwardly, sleepily, expanding and collapsing, rising and kneeling. There are immaculate places awaiting; a world of bliss with its mouth wide open.
Simply being, simply being, that is the ecstasy, I am told. In the body godly, in the power practicing wonders that do not need to be told, they are only felt and known. Gracious is the heart that knows them! Infinite are her taste buds alight with pleasure, her ears ringing with curious wanting. More! Could this body ever be satiated?
Only when it is feasting does it want for nothing. On purple potatoes warm and dry, golden nectar of the egg, ripe fruits, honeyed water, dancing warm in the living room, incense swirling—sandalwood and bone broth—alongside a body fulfilling aliveness. Presence is the continuous filling of the body, the body godly. This is the feast that never ends.