I want to become as soft as the mountains and as loud as the wind.
As soft as the stone that cradled me through childhood and adolescence: the Cascade and Olympic ranges. In its hold, I always felt cared for. Its lush old-growth and streaming rivers meeting the salty sound where I called home would teach me of magic. The magic of its beauty, harmony, and spirit made me feel connected to much more than myself.
The strong mountains soften when I let myself melt. When I dissolve into time and erode through its toughness I find its true strength. Strength that comes from the patience to breathe, the power to reconcile, and an ability to nurture.
I want to become as loud as the wind.
As loud as the blast that rushes at the top of a peak, the whisper that shares intimate truths, the breeze that moves the weather, and the wind floating sails and under feathered wings.
Both my parents grew up between the mountains and the ocean, my father from the Pacific Northwest, my mother from the Philippines, and when I look out to the water from the hills I think about home and the ancestors that brought me here. I dream of the vibrant green of the farm where my mother was raised and I was not. I wish my body could fly to a memory that feels so distant.
Now in the midwest, now an adult, I’m piecing together a dream, a memory, a message from the distant past, something that was whispered through time, buried in earth, and lost at sea. It's somewhere between my skin and the soil, between you and me: a tenderness, a love song, a eulogy, a yearning.
I want to become as soft as the mountains and as loud as the wind. Like the grass-covered figure laying across the horizon and the radio echos that scream into ether. I want to become a body with no edges, no defined start and end; a body that flows like water, like time; a body that remembers, forgets, imagines, and shares; a body that connects with other bodies; a spirit in peace with contradiction, pointing beyond understanding.
And one day, I know, I will be as soft as the mountains and as loud as the wind.