"The heavy is the root of the light"

Coming home

I left Phoenix a week early.

Instead of heading through the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado and forcing my 20-year-old car engine to perform, I went south on the flat to Mario in Houston.

Fascinating drive.

I wish I had gotten the photos from I-10 in New Mexico about dust storms. So ominous.

(Here’s someone else’s photo from Openverse- credit in the caption)

"Dust storms may exist" by quinn.anya is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

The next signs say:

IN A DUST STORM

(you drive a bit)

PULL OFF ROADWAY

(drive more)

TURN VEHICLE OFF

(drive more)

FEET OFF BRAKES

(drive more)

STAY BUCKLED

Wild.

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A few days with Mario was medicine beyond anything I could fathom.

We didn’t do anything. He worked, for the most part. We had one day off together, which I worked, because work for me is not really something I do on specific days or times.

We watched his recorded episodes of Bar Rescue.

We ate food. Texas-sized.

We went out for dinner with our friends Amanda and Travis (I have known them both for over a decade. We all met in New York.)

I was telling them the story of the people I met in Tempe (stories I haven’t written here yet) and Travis said to me “That just seems like an Andee story to me. You live your life in this way that you end up around all these people with these crazy stories.”

What I found in Houston (something I lacked in Tempe) was a regained sense of belonging. I didn’t have to do or be anything to be with Mario. We have 16 years of doing and being and talking. Mario and I are to a point where we can just exist quietly in a room together.

Too, my friends from New York knew me when I was a raging, angry, smoking, screaming, mean person. If they’re still around, that’s good people. That’s belonging.

---

Arizona didn’t give me much belonging, but belonging takes time.

The people there remind me of West Coast people (a sweeping generalization). You meet them and they give you a little, but you notice that it’s not true. There’s something missing.

Or, they give you way too much, but you’re not “there” for the conversation, because it isn’t one.

I’m not sure I had any deep connection in Arizona save for a few fleeting moments. Those moments were precious, like the ones you get in films where, for a moment, the protagonist has an epiphany…

Somehow, those fleeting moments are the ones that define the entire experience… the ones that do, indeed, whisper to you. They don’t come overtly, but subtly… The ones where you recognize that you created all that was, all that is, and you’re ready to go home and share that with others.

“Home” is illusory. It’s inside of you, deeply inside.

People ache to travel because they’re looking to find that sense of home. Yet, no matter where you go, there you are…. right there.

I wrote last week:

“Nomadic freedom is an illusion of liberation. The real power comes from being grounded in your body and centered in yourself.”

I was driving down Price Road on my last day in Tempe when I felt my body do a familiar and unpredictable thing: "Let go."

I've come to know that "letting go" is not something you do with your mind. You don't do it consciously. In fact, it is done, I believe, in another dimension entirely. Then, you feel the effects of it on your physical body here on Earth.

Every time it happens, it is not a choice, but rather, a transmission. Something that says "you've completed this lesson."

It almost always follows an intense contraction, and I liken it to the visual of a balloon covered in wax, where it gets squeezed tightly, and all the wax pieces break off.

What I've realized being somewhat untethered for the last month is that not everyone is meant to be untethered. Some of us are meant to be heavy, deep, rooted.

Even as a child, I cried in high places.

One of my earliest memories is wailing because the doctor’s table was too high off the ground for me. I was two.

It occurred to me on my second “hike in a high place” (which is relative. I know mountain climbers. lol) that I don’t know if the fear of heights is one I’m supposed to overcome.

This was profound. Hear me out, because it’s kind of wild:

I’ve had a lifelong fear of heights. Tall buildings, rollercoasters, elevators, mountains… Yes, I live near skyscrapers, but I don’t go inside of them. I did an internship my senior year of undergrad at MTV, and those were the last “tall buildings” I ever worked in.

I was thinking as I was coming down from Bell Rock in Sedona, “What if this is actually a message?”

Like, this isn’t something to change. This is information.

My Human Design environment is Valleys.

I was born in a valley. “The Wyoming Valley.” As a kid, we went to “The Wyoming Valley Mall.”

I could have fears like “public speaking” or shit like that, but I don’t. It takes me no effort at all to write this hot air and blast it to 450 people.

So I wonder…

Is it all just information? If someone is afraid of public speaking but isn’t afraid to climb the side of a mountain, why the hell are they trying to speak in public? Sure, maybe a one-and-done for the thrill of it, but regularly? That sounds grossly out of integrity to me.

(I’m reading Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity right now, and she echoes this sentiment.)

Not everyone is meant to be high up.

Some of us are ballast. We live close to the ground, close to our mothers; close to the Earth.

I don't do much "out there" because I'm not supposed to.

I spend time in the valleys with the humans.

Tao #8 says:

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself
and don't compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.

I’m not light.

I’m heavy.

My internal experience is heavy, which births the thing you read every week.

When you feel like I understand you, it’s because of that heavy. It’s because I am content with the low places that people disdain.

I am content with the low places in myself that people avoid.

I am content to look at it. And I am content to hold you in your story as you look at it, as I do for so many others. It’s by design.

I’ll leave you with one more Tao:

Tao #26 says:

The heavy is the root of the light.
The unmoved is the source of all movement.

Thus the Master travels all day
without leaving home.
However splendid the views,
she stays serenely in herself.

Stay beautiful.