Romanced by the sun

I am alone a majority of the time but I rarely ever feel alone.

I do not feel alone when I’m sitting in the sun, pleasantly warm with little covering up my skin. It’s no coincidence that they call it “sunkissed” for that’s how I feel with the sun heating up my skin, bringing out the natural toasty smell of me. How impossible it is to feel lonely when the lord of the day is caressing me, making my entire body blush.

Even better for not feeling lonely when one is alone, is when the sun is accompanied by a breeze, softly. It makes me feel like something is happening. Like I’m at the beach or riding a bike down the boardwalk or cruising down PCH with the windows down (can you tell I miss California?).

The last year and a half has felt like waiting and like growing. But I’ve learned gentleness and slow living, and that in the silence of the mind, the desert actually makes a lot of movement and noise. I end up feeling grateful that my life has emptied out and slowed down and simplified so much so that the sun and the wind have become my companions. I think this is how someone like Emily Dickinson gets made. Slow down and listen and feel. The earth comes alive. The characters of nature reveal themselves.

Sometimes in the quiet revelry of worshipping the sun I wonder what it would be like to instead be caressed by a person. My skin is so soft; shouldn’t anyone else know this, touch this? It’s been 18 months since moving to Nevada, 18 months since being in the arms of another, four years since I was in an “official” relationship. Yet when my energy is not focused on the missing but instead on the other beauties of life, I hardly feel the desire to belong to someone. Don’t be mistaken: I have overflowing bucketfuls of love to give. But I suppose I feel that for now, me and my words and the sun and the wind have more need of my love than a lover.