I have the privilege of being in the company of my own earthly damon for the entrance into the ninth year of my sobriety — her twenty-ninth year. Iudita. A lean name, tripping the mouths that speak it without already knowing it. Mouths that prefer monosyllabic utterances with pale complexions. That don’t appreciate the fine unusualness of such a name.
My growth is only evident to me when I am along side her in camaraderie, realizing that I am not small and don’t have to be. We like to move when we’re together — take long walks, drive, speak. Her gift to me this year is her 27-year coin, which she had turned into a keychain. The broad gap of those nineteen years bending down to touch me, to lay a hand on my head like a paved path to worldliness and maturity, to invite me along — it’s a thing more lovely and unexpected than I can arrive at with words.
There is a sensation of being cupped in a deep comforting curve. I can talk and listen for hours and come out of it more awake and divided than I knew possible.
Yesterday, we walked a trail at North Mountain surrounded by so much expanse, so much space, openness. The air was sweet and cold, telling a story. Thick gray clouds are palpably sad. The inhaled scent of the air — so faint and heady and earthy at once — running its fingers through everywhere, inside and out.
We walked slowly because we had to keep looking up from our footing to the middle distance, let ourselves feel the story, the lift.
Our motion never halts. It belongs not to us but to the realm of mystery and motion. We are experience and knowing and falling hail — to the degree we can let ourselves be. And on and on and so beautifully on we move.
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