Just being me

Happy as something unimportant
and free as a thing unimportant.  

   - Anna Swir, from Happy as a Dog's Tail

Sometimes I find I don't really know how to relax and just be myself in a given moment. I can live in my head, over-thinking and making complexities where they don't need to exist. Memories from a minute ago, an hour ago, a day ago, a month, a lifetime, get re-lived and analyzed, as if I could construct some alternate reality for them if I re-live them enough. I find myself trying to understand life, intimately, rather than live it as it comes. I'm not talking about fatalism or determinism, just the ability to, as the quaint little prayer goes, "accept those things I cannot change and [have] the wisdom to know the difference."

I grow a little stiff with, a little lean with, a little faint with, a little
worn with seeming.
I must need to conquer my mind.
The roses dead because of drought
because whoever lives here cares enough
to let their roses die. I must
need to conquer the notion
anything needs conquering. 

    - Ari Banias, from The Happy

Then, on less frequent occasions (though more and more frequently), I settle into my self, my time, and space (some would no doubt say I am being fully "present") and, like a breath exhaling, I spread out and relax. Is contentment the same thing as happiness? Maybe; probably. I know I'm finding more and more of that now.

To come to things—swift
as a ray of light, or a look.
To live as I write: spare—the way
God asks me—and friends do not. 

   - Marina Tsvetaeva, from I am happy living simply

The musician who goes by the name of Perfume Genius recently wrote a song (Just Like Love):

Sleeve cut just off the shoulder
You are christening the shape
They'll talk
Give them every reason
For child, you walk 

Just Like Love

Of that song, Perfume Genius says, "I saw this Facebook video of a boy, probably around seven, wearing a dress he had fashioned from a blanket, sashaying through his house while his mother applauded and cheered him on. He was so proud. It was such a beautiful thing, but bittersweet because I knew his spirit would change soon, that he’d become self-aware and ashamed, at some level. The song is about how divine he is, then and always — that he was born perfect."

Feeling and being me
Is good as good can be.
I claim my own identity. 

I am as happy as a flower
Perfuming its one hour
With a sweet sense of power. 

   - Katherine Wisner McCluskey, from Wholly Happy

When you are a lifetime of practiced at being what you are not, it takes a while to relax. It does, though, get better.

Today's Playlist:

• Perfume Genius: Just Like Love
• Bill Frisell: Fields of Alfalfa
• Carl Jackson & Merle Haggard: Must You Throw Dirt in My Face
• Calder: 9-Vessel
• Brian Withycombe: My All
• Donavon Frankenreiter: Dance Like Nobody's Watching
• ELO: The Whale
• Bruce Cockburn: Justice