Eclipse Wishlist
Happy solar eclipse :)) How wonderful for us all to have a spring day to begin the rest of our lives on. See y'all in 2045 for another one (hopefully I'll get more work out of this piece before then).
What I Want (in 2024) for My Future
[As of 2:58 pm, 4/8/24, during the eclipse, in MD]
I want to keep buying loose bags of colored candlesticks from the thrift store up the road. I want to remember how much I love to be on a walk in Spring. I want fresh flowers from the grocery store and Chinese takeout on Sundays. I want to be able to drive home whenever I need to. I want to tell my friends I love them often and show them it more. I want challenges that are good times (and good times that feel as easy as breathing— the kind of time you can live in forever). I want to be able to fold a fitted sheet. I want to remember that today, everyone I knew stopped the world for two hours to share in the most cosmically public display of affection I can think of. Let me remember this, and also what the world should have stopped for but didn’t, and move onward with the knowledge that it is really as simple as deciding that you will make a day of it. I want to love my research and give folks who ask about it a damn good explanation and the grace to admit it is confusing. I want to have learned to give grace to others in everything. May my heart be both always aware of and caught off guard by the similarities between everyone (and know the truth, which is that one’s interest in your differences may matter even more that all that you already share). I want to cook, to know when to wake up before my naps get too long, and cut my own bangs well. I want to remember that to listen to someone is one of the kindest acts you can do. I want to write well and keep reading better work than my own. I want to be closer to my friends and I want each new one I make to disarm me— no more do I have to feel like I worm my way into people’s affection and burrow myself in it like a cicada waiting to climb back out. I want to be practiced in my devotion— let me continue to be active in what I love and mourn in life, even if it is just through learning to sit with God. I want to remember the way the breeze felt once we got closer to the peak of the eclipse: the sky turning a milky blue, while the trees and their almost-yellow green looked like a painting. It got cool, and the birds kept their words stuck in their throats, and the wind lapped at my window and licked my elbow like a dog. It felt happy to see me, like it had been waiting for the eight infinities I was out of the house at work. I missed you, too!! It was forever for me, too.
This is written on the piece of notebook paper under my drawings of my future c. 2022. May it likewise keep bleeding into now.
