Fluid

I want to celebrate moments and goals that are beyond the surface in this new evolution of my life. I hope I can cultivate this to be a sustained version of the feeling when you've been in water for a long time. The sensation of being in the water long after you've dried off. That buoyant feeling is what I want my presence, care and love to feel like. 

But what does it mean to be gentle and water like in these times? What does and does not get celebrated? 

Waters and fluidity illuminate that the older I get the more I try to be sensual with my personhood. Everything is moving towards being ritualized and rooted in a place of pleasure. 

Now, I can even recognize levels of intimacy in how I'm referred to. The timber in a voice that is fully commanding my attention. My name is four syllables, and I am so used to folks shortening it as a term of endearment that I at times forget what it means to be called by the full version. So when I hear someone who cares for me enunciate each syllable, it's almost like I'm being summoned. Almost as if it's a call to prayer, something that's melodic and soothing. 

And I'm not even talking about a sexual experience. 

I'm talking about simple yet profound ways that communication can happen without directly uttering certain sounds. In the absence of physical touch and presence, how can you connect with the people you hold most dear through sound and sight. 

The risk of being touched in a pandemic has to not outweigh the potential reward. But, maybe that’s how we should have been moving in the first place. I know sex educators have been saying this for years about sexually transmitted infections and diseases, and they’re singing the same song in the midst of COVID-19. What does having your physical touch and quality time needs being met during the multiple pandemics mean?

I started the year sensing that a relationship was displaying red flags, and that I had to leave swiftly to preserve my safety. I’m ending the year with a deeper relationship with myself, and how to express the lessons I’ve learned by practicing with those I care for. There have been several plot twists, changes, and surprises in this 11th hour of my Saturn Return, which also marked the end of my 20s. 

Eleventh hour and witching hour investigations look like me wondering where all the gentleness that people see and describe me with comes from. I thought it was from my parents, both water signs, covering me in their love. I am mostly made of earth, air and fire. The small parts of water in my chart are in Cancer and Scorpio. But as I turn thirty, I realize that a perceived lack of water meant that I have been finding waters and fluidity as a means to have self compassion and freedom. 

being more like water as a means to go back into the womb of creation 
flowing or finding moments that buoy us for when the storms come
because they will, so we move with a little more compassion. 

a little more grace.
a little more love.
for ourselves.

fluidity making way for misstep only lasting for a heartbeat 
surrender making way for plot twists and newer definitions of connectivity 

once a dancer always a dancer 
once of water always of water

devotion and forward motion 
being present to the motions
as opposed to astral projection into timelines that do 
or don’t 
exist 
steady or reliable waves 
currents of care 

How can we be devoted in(to) interdependent ways of being?

devoted to curiosity 
devoted to understanding 
devoted to growth.

Maybe I was more fluid than I thought. More gentle than I realized. I hope that I have a better real time sense of what others see in me. My gentleness and care that I give freely that doesn't really pretend to be anything other than what it is. Love. 

That is what I want for my birthday, this particular birthday, on this once-in-a-lifetime cosmic mash up of a day that marks the anniversary of when I came earthside. 

This is 30.