The thunder rumbles through my dreams and even makes my house shake. I can hear the steady rain hitting the thirsty ground and the beginning leaves touching the sensation of water for the first time. This is a crucial day in the development of spring, in the waking back into life that is thankfully a yearly event here in Minnesota. I wait for this day every year now as I am finally old enough to notice. Today is a pivot point of darkness and light, of brown and green, of heaviness and hope. Pivot points are always paradoxes.
Prince died this week and I am affected in unexpected ways. I am slow to rise this morning as I was up exceptionally late last night for no apparent reason. I sat in the quiet of my house after watching clips of Prince’s performances on Saturday Night Live. There were songs that I had never heard before, guitar solos that rattled my brains, costumes just one step short of making my eyes rolls, and quintessential Prince weirdness. Mostly there was artistry and brilliance on display, delivered through an undercurrent of sexual rhythm. Genius.
I turn off the television and move into my kitchen. My dishwasher broke this week so there was two weeks worth of dishes to do. I silently set to the task and listened to the water hitting the sink. I wiped the counters and heard the creaking in the wood floor. I noticed the orb of kitchen light enveloping me and felt the darkness pressing at its edges. Everything felt heightened. There was no going directly sleep after such an explosion of silent sensation, both felt and unfelt, both seen and unseen. I let the silence of my house dance in fullness around me for as long as my eyes stayed open.
So I am grateful for rain and thunder this morning, juxtaposed against the miraculous green emerging onto the scene. I look at the puddles of water forming on the ground and I know that the earth won’t waste it. I know that the water and the dirt IS the green I am seeing, just not quite yet. There is always a pivot point in a transition, a brief moment in time when seemingly opposing forces sit in tandem before becoming what’s next. There is a time when the paradox IS the becoming. One of my goals as a grown-up is to relish in such paradoxes, not just the outcomes. My hope is to realize that the paradox is both the beginning and the end. On this dark, sleepy day, the rainwater sits with the dirt as the green begins to grow within me.
I am not sure what I will do with Prince’s passing. I know I feel an unexpected loss. I am not sure why I feel this so deeply as I was a fan but not a fanatic. What I do know is that I will do more than my dishes. I will keep writing this goddamn book and I will remember to slyly smile with artistry and flare. On my secret ’inside,’ I might even wear a rufflely shirt and dawn some ridiculous boots. I will sing whatever song I am to sing while moving both my hips and my mouth.
And Prince will be missed.