In therapy, many of the inner dialogues my therapist suggests I try on are some iteration of “I got me.”
I got me.
As in, I can take on life, no matter its twists, turns, and surprises, on my own two high-arched feet. As someone who has ebbed and flowed through my own wave pool of mental wellness, it’s a concept I’ve always struggled to believe.
Well if I need companionship, do I got me? If I need anti-depressants do I got me? If I have loud invasive thoughts do I got me? What about if I am reliant on medications to keep my organs ticking, what then? As I assess my relationship to my body, my mind, substances, and the many-shades of my identities, there are so many hues of questioning my own self-reliance.
This is not an ode to the importance of individualism or going it alone. You know I’ll never sing that song. But my need to keep repeating this mantra came from a deep place of not grinning and bearing through it, but instead learning what it feels like to trust myself. Trust my needs, trust my intuition, trust that my inside parts are good and knowing.
Part of starting to believe this mind-phrase has meant acting it out loud. Getting more comfortable with alone-ness. Finding joy in my own company. This is going to maybe sound unhinged, but go stick with me here, this last Tuesday I went to the movies alone for the first time in my whole 32 years. As a serial romanticist, extroverted friend-lover (and not someone who frequents watching movies out of the comfort of my own home), I just never thought that kind of outing was something I needed to take myself on. People I love regularly do this as an act of me-time… my me-time often takes on the shade of nap, cook, sing in the car, read a book.
But as my partner was out of town and I was playing with new ways to show myself I am my own best friend, I thought fuck-it. It’s $5 Tuesday at the indie theater and they’re showing “Perfect Days.” The film is set in Japan and is directed by German Wim Wenders. And every minute of its two hour and three minute run time is… as the title suggests… perfect.
There’s not much dialogue, and it’s not needed. The main character is Hirayama, played by Koji Yakusho, a Japanese middle aged-man who cleans public toilets for a living. And each moment of each day we witness him live is a visual mediation on the power of ritual as a vessel to carry the self through time with assurance and ease. We watch, day-in and day-out, as Hirayama greets and closes the day with peace. Spending time tending to his ever-growing collection of small, baby-trees. Taking lunch of an egg sandwich and carton of whole milk in the same garden and capturing the sunlight pouring through the breezy leaves with his film camera. Washing the day off at a sentō, ending with a meal at the same crowded dinner counter and falling asleep to a book. We watch this cycle happen, over and over, for an hour of the film. And we watch as Hirayama finds deep contentedness through this well-worn dance.
His obsession with komorebi, the Japanese word for the shape-shifting shadow patterns created by light beaming through the moving leaves of trees, also makes it into his dreamstate. A pure, simple love. A prayer to presence. To witnessing and appreciating the small things that are around us, every day, all the time, if we choose to tune in and pay attention with our little radio antenna.
Deep into the film, in a tender scene between Hirayama and his niece who has run away from home in a well-known state of teenage despair, Hirayama speaks some of the films few words that are the essence of this presence:
“Next time is next time. Now is now.”
As the credits rolled after a stunning closing scene of Hirayama getting emotional on his daily commute in the sunrise to Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good,” I take off the thick socks I brought with me to keep my feet warm in the cold theater. I toss my empty non-alcoholic IPA can in the bin and it tinks. It’s 11 PM and it’s the kind of night where the sky looks purple. There’s an electrical storm and I drive home silently to the pops of light in the sky, pockets of surprise. In the silence, I can’t help but smile wider than I have all day.
Now is now. And there’s only this now. And then this one. And then this one.
Abandoning the now is what ever made me think I wasn’t wholly capable of holding myself through this life. Letting what if’s and fears and hopes and expectations and long-played-out fictional scripts get in the way of a perfectly good, perfectly able, perfectly capable me in a perfectly individual now.
A group of friends and I are going to a cabin in Oklahoma to experience the April 8 solar eclipse. It’s in the path of totality (we’re going to be in the day-darkness for over four minutes). The tiny town is expecting thousands and thousands of visitors, so many that the county has called in the National Guard and they’re encouraging folks to bring extra supplies, food, water, medicine, and gas in case society-collapses in and around those four minutes. The chaos excites me.
Speaking of chaos, where the fuck is Kate Middleton? If you’ve texted with me the past couple weeks you know I am DEEP in this Twitter hole of layered conspiracies. Maybe she is just on the 47th season of Survivor, but I fear it is much darker than that.
I’m counting down the days until Beyonce’s country album release. I’ve been in a strange cowboy-era for the last year or so and we all know she’s just one of those rare humans who can do everything with such grace and perfection. Can’t wait to belt it out with my gay-bolo-tie on.
With love and affection, yall.