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Sometimes people need a change of scenery – a whole adventure
peppered with exotic spices; with savory meals during a sunset that sheds a
whole new light on our worldview with no added effort but for a slight change
in meridian. They seek fresh perspective at the bottom of glasses of tropical
fruit juice and rum or in the sage wisdom from the old man who is said to live
atop the mountain's peak – evasive as the rainbow’s gold and not nearly as wise
as his seekers were in the first place.
I, too, have trekked the globe in search of an answer –
seeking sounding boards against steely walls of city centers and the spongy
backdrop of a jungle; against the ancient limestone and marble capsules of academia and religion,
listening for an echo of ‘my truth’ all the while passing too quickly through
the fun house to pay attention to the more subtle reverberations that followed my
query. They may very well have offered the harmonious chord I’d been listening
for had I paused long enough to notice.
What if, instead, that truth – that golden wisdom or the
answers in our own quiet hum or the ecstasy in the first sips from a daiquiri glass
– could be found in the place to which we always return; that place that grants
unwavering comfort if we acquiesce to it. That sacred space to which I am
referring is between fresh sheets.
There is nothing in the whole world like clean sheets.
Peeling off the under-layer of that intimate cushion to remove the dust and
sweat and tears you’ve carried with you and laid to rest each night – mildly
absorbed to relinquish you of your burden but never fully discarded; rather,
catalogued and stored away for you to sift and sort at a later date if you so
choose, or to leave permanently behind in one wash cycle. Residing there – a
collective memory upon which you rest your everything and leave it all behind only to
gather more the next day. And when you put on clean sheets, you strip all of
that away and pull that silky fabric taut across your mattress like a blank
canvass.
When I was little, my mom used to raise the top sheet up and
drop it across my sprawled frame. She said that this was what angels descending
feels like. Each moment dissolved like a separate grain as the angels graced each
nerve ending – skimming my toes, knee caps, chest, and nose, sinking deeper
across my patient body until the sheet and I were resting as one, like a single
piece of smooth chocolate melting across each taste bud of the tongue.
Then I’d slip inside to slumber deeply and start fresh with
a new awakening, sliding one foot along the silky space and onto the cool floor, and then the other, to
grace a new day.
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