22/25, Expansions

November notes and picking apart a pomegranate

I needed to feel grounded on some Friday, that was just a random Friday, so I bought a pomegranate at the grocery store. In my kitchen, I sliced the fruit into quarters, which is the best technique that I have so far learned, and picked each ruby seed from its ivory membrane and placed them into the bell jar next to the cutting board. While I sank my fingers into the seeds, the juice shot onto the white counter, my forehead, and bled into the light brown chopping board. The seeds are sitting in the bell jar in the fridge and I will eat them today.

Today has ended and it is not the next day, but two days since I opened my pomegranate. The seeds have traveled with me down South and I just put the few remainders into a salad that I am obsessed with. When I arrived home, two pomegranates were waiting for me, one on the kitchen table and the other on the counter, and I was tasked to open them before I leave.

Many of my closest friends have been scorpios so each November, I feel an obligation to celebrate these friends despite being miles apart from each other and having not talked since their birthday the year before. There has been a pull towards them that I can’t shake, except for this year, it is different. Their birthdays have rolled around and I only remember long after their day has already passed. My mother, on the other hand, is one of my favorite people to celebrate. In my recent turning of twenty two, I think I am becoming more and more like her and shedding any fear of this change.

So I turned twenty-two and starting putting sweetener in my tea. I was told I look like someone who drinks black coffee and I’ve begun to watch the sunrise in all of it’s shades of blue and grey on Thursday mornings only. At the DMV, I felt alarmingly human and while lying in the chair at the dentist office, I felt surprisingly aware of the person I am becoming. I don’t change my earrings anymore and instead, I rotate between two necklaces, both of which were/are my mother’s. Now, I am wearing a blue ceramic spiral on one side and on the other side, it says síocháin: the Irish word for peace. For most of my life I have been at war with myself, but for twenty two, I aim for peace so I wear this necklace to remind me of all the emotions other than hostility. The other necklace has no meaning aside from being my mother’s and that it is weightless when strung around my neck.

This fall, I reserve the afternoon and early evening for naps and staring out the window, though now the trees have lost their leaves so I gaze at the bare branches. I drift into a slumber so deep it feels like death. When I awake, I feel re-enlivened. I can feel the frosty air through the window on my cheeks and the frigidness of the wet concrete sidewalk below. In my room, I practice being upside down in sirasana: a headstand, that I have recently developed a commitment to learning and practicing.

This year, like most birthdays, offers a moment for reflection. I only have a handful of them this year as I am realizing, more than ever, that less is more. I always carry stamps in my journal because I never know when I might need to write someone whether they live in the same city or the next state over. Being predictable is not the end of the world, despite once thinking it was. There is no need to feel shame in Shazamming a song (and to further this, autocorrect corrected shame to soft anyways). All the plants I care for are reflections of myself so I am trying to make sure to water them regularly and follow through with repotting and propagating them for sharing. There are always going to be moments of reversion to who you once were. Always lock your bike wherever you are (non-negotiable). And keep an open mind even when you desperately want it to remain closed (I have decided it’s about time to learn a knitting pattern and to try new coffee drinks, at Ritual Coffee in San Francisco, I ordered a Gibraltar!)

My juicy pomegranate

Happy thanksgiving✭..˚.𖥔 ݁ ˖𓂃.☘︎ ݁˖.