Sassafras
You’re soft, you know? You make me feel like my body is moving through jelly, slow enough to feel the way we embrace each other in a sticky sweetness. There’s something really beautiful about your spontaneity of form. When others look at you, they see the light greens and tender beiges of spring, followed by the fuzzy jade of summer and the golden reds and yellows of fall. When I look at you, I see a kaleidoscope. When I close my eyes, I see it. I see the way you shine the sun and all of her colors back at me.
Sassafras has much to teach about mindful chewing. Take the tender leaf she offers you between your lips and feel her transform on your tongue. Feel her become medicine.
When you tend to something, you do not leave it better than you left it, but you leave it different. You allow your presence to seep in harmony, leaving behind a stain, a melody, that arose from that dissonance between chaos and transformation that your introduction imbued.
You, too, are the world. When you soften your edges and experience a fractalization of self, you multiply your touchpoints. Feel more. Taste more. Touch more. Feel each particle of life as it flows over your skin, through your lungs, into your ears. Have you ever felt every particle of water that flowed through a river?
Sometimes, I don’t know where we’re going. But the beautiful thing about not knowing is the opportunity to be—the opportunity to find out—the opportunity to hear a voice that you didn’t know you could hear in a language that maybe you don’t know. You don’t have to know what they say to find beauty in that voice. They’re sharing something with you that lives so far beyond words.
Think in color. Hear in visions of purple and emerald green. Feel music kiss your eardrums and see vibrations pulse through the air. It can be as simple as putting a fuzzy green leaf in your mouth and feeling it become something unexpected. Emptiness is a thick, thick feeling.