Lauren C.

The Gospel According to Felix

I’ve been forced into 8 hours of stillness and I’m arriving at two places.

I’m feeling a bliss that reminds me of lying out in the sun, the warmth soaking through cotton and filling my heart with peace but soon it is as if my skin is crying.

Sweat soaks, clothes stick, skin turns crimson and darkness wraps my spirit, ripping it into pieces that glitter like shattered glass by the ebb and flow of the ocean. Soon they’ll be smoothed down into green pieces and strung on a necklace.

It’s dark and light, soft and harsh, cold and hot, happy and sad and music notes fill the silent air with words of love while our bodies meld into one.

Love. Noun. Verb. Definition: When an elephant first sees his peanut.

Or is it a mirror that reflects what you don’t like about yourself? That insecurity and that simple joy like a little kid getting a popsicle while the tar road bubbles in the heat.

Lesson #1: LOVE COMES AND GOES. It is not constant. There are wrinkled noses, giggles, stray hairs tucked behind an ear, and a place for my head to rest on his shoulder.

Lesson #2: EVERYONE can be loved but NOT everyone is loved. When one heart is mended, another is broken. He’s found a peaceful happiness with her, while another she soaks her feather pillow each night.

A light mist fills the gray sky, cooling my skin as a flurry of colors twist above the clouds into a seamless rainbow, reaching from mountain into sea, a curve as wide as your dimpled smile that makes my spirit stop quivering in the dark places.

Lesson #3: Remember, if you don’t love yourself, you can’t love others. You don’t know what love is, you can’t accept that hurt and that wonder—you search your battered spirit until you think an answer is found but IT IS NOT A FEELING. IT IS DOING (which is Lesson #4). CARING, KINDNESS, LOVING, AFFECTION. Oh god, not more definitions. Let’s skip those and go to Lesson #5: LIFE IS NOT A GAME—it is not “Sorry,” where you can hurt every player with a simple smile and a curt apology and everything is okay. We all lose in the end anyways, we all die and then what is the point of your deceit and underhanded ways since it won’t get you anywhere in this precious time.

HEAVEN IS ALREADY HERE—you die in each moment, with each rasping, quick breath and that is freedom.

It’s another stage and if you want to extend your stay encircled in strong arms and staring up at rainbows, then make changes and start lovin’ because if you have judgment the shit will get beat out of you and besides, all of eternity has already happened.

You are completely present in it with the pleasure and the shredded pain, like cooking delicious strawberry pancakes and burning your flesh on the sizzling pan at the same time. That sensation happens when you’re sharing your feelings and you realize this is love.

You’ll just be a pile of clothes and fingernails if you don’t learn your lessons in this life.

Have you got what love is now? Are your animal instincts being repressed? Are you facing the corners of your spirit? If not, another 8 hours may be required. This will not be pretty…

Do you feel the bliss and the darkness yet?