Why it's so reassuring that the body will always win...

Not that *win* is a good word for it, really, which is the notion my brain is spitting onto screen currently, ironic really, as mon cerveux has little to do with it truly, what I am trying to (exhaustedly) say.

Win has connotations of the human's confused tendency to place things on a vertical spectrum, better or worse, winner or loser, I-did-it-and-you-didn't.

I drove for 6 hours, (well, was driven, someone who spends as much time as I do looking out the side window shouldn't ever be asked to look out the front one for too long!) in a car blowing hot air somehow, rather uncomfortably. Before this, getting up at a grunt-worthy 5 a.m. after little sleep due to exciting clarinet laying next-to-bed.

Then went straight to some funny presentation in a dark room stuffed with people, (like olives & almonds, feta, red-bits) that, if I closed my eyes and let my mind wander, felt all too much like said hot-air car. It was actually fascinating, how with a bit of sleep deprivation and one similar element in two very different situations, I could transport myself back in time and almost hear the traffic roar around me.

And heavy backpack the whole way, and pen all over hands from writing notes of things to ponder, (like Penelope Fitzgerald, whom I am most...curiously interested.....about) and somewhat greasy hair from hot air, and talk talk talk to all these truly beautiful people, really....

Then to friend's house for shower and a place in the world. Where I realize as I sit here that I am so unbelievably blessed with all the magic around me, and that my body will always win out, in the end, which someone lovely mentioned to me some time ago. For all the mental push-ups and wonderings and wanderings through the brain I execute and compose and evacuate and recite and recall mean nothing compared to a cold shower after a long day, of the touch of hand against a weary face, of the tiredness in the eyes, of flesh and bone and one cup of coffee after 2 weeks out in the woods with no one to talk to.

How comforting to come home to rest in my own skin and find it is what really guides me, beyond all the ways I can justify and recall and change my mind. And what a reminder to be gentle and open to all the other bodies that make up all the creatures around me.