
It was a summer sunrise years ago when I felt the earth spinning beneath my feet. Too early for intense heat, the air traveled comfortably in and out of my lungs as I ran through the dew and fog. No dog, no stroller and baby, no cars, no passers-by: only me and the gentle arc of cerulean blue peeking out ever more from behind lush rolling hills were present to hear the rhythmic footfalls. Compelled by solitude with a gentle dare, I took the earphones out, turned the music off, and listened only to my footfalls. Listened only to my breath as I floated down the ancient mountain, gradually becoming aware of the spinning beneath my feet. The velocity of earth flying through space and whirling on its axis was one with my own as the downward slope of asphalt melted away into the eternal soup of space and time. There was nothing but the spinning earth and the amplified arc of horizon as my body disappeared. Just the earth and I, spinning, revolving, and moving with one another while the past, present, and future dissolved into atomic memories. Melting and fading away into the soup.
(It’s times like these that you have all the answers to every question ever asked. You know exactly who you are and what to do and where to go and how to be to make a valuable impact upon the world around you. You melt away into the soup, looking upon then, now, and forever from the outside, inside, and middle of everything and nothing, seeing your petty problems in their true light, and realizing your power of release.)
… Until a jogger passed. A dog walker. A pair of headlights disrupting the salmon sunrise. I slowly came back to myself, to my increasingly heavy footfalls and labored breathing, remembering my place in the stillness and the silliness of my stresses yet unable to avoid the surge of stomach ache thoughts as I neared the end of my run and inevitable return to my dark marital home. I envy the definition of purpose given inherently to each grain of sand, to the gradual sunrise, to the spinning earth beneath our feet. If only that velvety thick understanding of eternal purpose would consume me into itself and offer permanent release to these constant states of doubt and uncertainty. If only I could disappear into the spinning of the earth, into time and space, into the ocean of consciousness filling the void around us for long enough to bring something back to this side of reality, I might yet serve a purpose in this life.
Renee Novosel
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