Outside the air is chalky with frost. Dawn pinkens the stubble of pine along the mountain’s fontanel. I’m shivering in front of my kitchen window, watching the morning unravel the tight dark weave of the solstice night, untouched by the heat roaring up through the grate at my feet. I can’t seem to get warm these days no matter how hard I try. A year ago, I might be outside, running up the road to greet the sun. My morning run has been an embodied ritual for a long time. But lately, when I do run, it’s indoors at the gym where I know I’ll be surrounded by people if, if if…. I don’t want to say the words. But I think them all the time. When I go down to the basement alone to do the laundry, when I go to sleep at night, when I drive out of cell service. Lately, I can hardly make it up the stairs. I shower sitting down, clutching the tiles, willing the hot water to somehow pound its temperature into my fossilized pith.
“You have put an extraordinary amount of energy out into the world,” my friend Greta observed the other night. “Writing, teaching, speaking, relating, giving. What would it look like to briefly turn that energy back towards your own body? What if you don’t need to write another book? What if you need to create and write and energize your own body?”