“They said, “You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are.”

The man replied, “Things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar.”

— Wallace Stevens

I went down to the waterfront and ran along the crashing waves for a little while. The sun and the wind layer upon each other, and the white-capped water fades into the horizon. It’s strange to contemplate how close to the end of the world we are again.

The water color, the temperature, the mountains peeking out from above the cerulean, the hazy distance, and Antarctica just beyond our reach.

As I mentioned, I’m trying to listen to Podcasts while I run. Death, Sex, and Money was recommended to me. I listened to how love comes up as a subject so frequently in conversation, no matter the original topic. I listened to how vulnerable it can be, how secrets can be kept from each other in relationships for over 20 years. I contemplated Jane Fonda’s decision between “being with a funny man who keeps you laughing” and “being whole.” She chose the latter. The stories that were most striking included examples of when love surprises us, when love is bigger than we could have imagined, and that it can overcome the clichés. That when given the chance, lovers may be more understanding than you could ever expect. That you don’t have to follow the set narrative that everybody else does, you can decide to go a different way.

The wind sends a cloth of clouds over the mountaintop every afternoon, reminding us that there is something greater than ourselves.

This life is an opportunity to lean in, to face whatever we fear, to calm down the urgency of unguided action.

“The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.”

— David Bowie

The way through love and life is more difficult to find than the way beyond it, or even away from it. I am no longer sure what parts of the path are fiction that I make up, and I am no longer sure that there even is a particular reality that I am trying to arrive at. I am no longer sure that it matters.

Just as I stare at what I convince myself is definitely the edge of the world, just as I am certain we will fall into nothingness, you quietly hand me a way to see that on the other side is yet another luscious shore.

“The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.”

“After the final no there comes a yes, and on that yes a future world depends.”

— Wallace Stevens