all the time pain, everywhere beauty
⊹✺⊹ everywhere beauty ⊹◍⊹
moonrise over washington square park arch during pride weekend 2023
i’ve been in consistent pain for 9 years. there have been ups and downs, (a real rock bottom in 2016 when i couldn’t lift a fork or glass of water to my mouth), but largely it gets steadily worse. which is to say i experience it in many more places and ways — it has been spreading. but believe me dear reader, it has not spread faster than my capacity for and connection to beauty and delight. in many ways, pain has been my compass to find more of these joys, to be in deeper relationship with life, other embodied beings, and the flow of the universe
the pain bloomed from my shoulders and back, a still noticeable nexus. it began longer than 9 years ago, that’s just when it became sustained. these days it extends across my muscular system.. from the muscles in my head, down my arms to my fingers, my legs, hips, quads, calves, feet. it’s uncomfortable to be sure. and i was VERY bitter about this for awhile, and the bitterness sometimes still creeps in when i’m experiencing a debilitating flare that (appearingly) conflicts with my goals and desires. however, i have come to be in relationship to my pain in a field of deep gratitude. a soothsayer, sanyu estelle, once asked me ‘what has been made possible thru your pain’ to which i replied everything. without it i would still be ‘living’ (zombie-ing) a life that was not mine - was not of me.
tho the pain persists, my anguish ended when i stopped feeling entitled to a body free of pain, when i stopped feeling that what was undeniably present was somehow wrong. i was unilaterally attempting to impose my will on life, on my body. i forgot everything here on earth is a collaboration, a cocreation. life became about results and how much i could bend myself to attain them. when i stopped feeling at war with my body and began to listen, more deeply, at what it is telling me and when, a new type of freedom emerged. a freedom to belong to life, and the earth, and let it belong within me. with all it’s quirks and wonks, to commit to deep intimacy with the full spectrum of what is offered while here on earth.
denying truth does not make it un-so, it only creates friction, stagnation and resistance to the undeniable flow of life. life is not affected by my belligerent denial of its circumstances. all that harm and anguish was just the lens with which i chose to experience the life that is present. [this is not an assertion that all things are fair, aligned, nor that everyone ‘deserves’ the circumstances they are in. this does not negate the reality of systemic injustices and gross inequities of access to care and resources.] to deny what is present is to disempower ourselves. but to be alive is to have power (regardless of what systems of injustice and exploiters would have us believe). when we are present with truth, our power remains. we always have a point of agency within our circumstances, however small. discomfort and pain are usually showing us what needs change, shifting, balancing. our circumstances might make us feel disempowered and disconnected from our agency, but there is always a way to shift and flow, always more beauty to be had. beauty is everywhere.
how lucky i feel i am to have a body (full stop) and to have a body that communicates so openly, so directly, so consistently. it is always clear to me when i am out of balance, or it becomes clear soon, body makes sure of that. my pain shows me when i’m overworking, undermobilizing, needing rest, ignoring that which needs attention, heading in a wrong direction, and much more. my pain slows me down endlessly, so much so that i get breaks to look around, indulge moments i didn’t know i needed, witness life i didn’t know was there.
i don’t feel attached to my pain however. it is very welcome to leave whenever. and while it is here i’m very down to be in collaboration. i realize too, my system is sensitive, to sensations of discomfort as much as delight. pain—pleasure are a sort of earth paradox that i’ve come to embrace. in the process of releasing resistance to pain, holding it as valuable and not inferior, i have been gifted with a deepened capacity for pleasure. pleasure finds and pierces me, pervades me far deeper than my experience of pain. this long relationship with pain has shown me something too. with every return to a low-low, i can’t help but remember and know the deep rush of beauty and pleasure will return. as i deepen my relationship and experience with the whole pain—pleasure spectrum, i come to find beauty dwells everywhere. in pain, in pleasure, in life, in death — i’ve come to find the duality of earth and all its treasures is bursting with beauty that is hard to ignore.
a tree grows out of literal bricks on this old building i walk by to get to the park <3