Here and there true wildness asserts itself. Roots push under the concrete in front of the music store. The sidewalk cracks and bulges. A long branch outside the deli reaches into wires strung between tall poles. The wind gusts and up and down the block, the electricity goes out. A large limb falls. It sweeps across the paint store, shattering the facade on its way down.

There is a kind of freedom in the decay as our idea of order loses ground. Scrabbling at the edges of an eroding bank, our control, our suppressions, our repressions, our bindings, our propriety, our impositions finally swirl into the powerful, unavoidable current of another order. I recognize myself in this torrent. I breathe deeply, surprised to realize that I’ve been dizzy from shallow breathing for a long time.

Last night, something happened. I’m not even sure what it was but it hit something old and painful. As I lay in bed, in the dark, curled under blankets, I was absorbed by the experience of lying on the ground staring straight up at a bright blue sky with large, powder-grey doves flying overhead. Their fanned tails swooped just above my face, so close that for a moment as they flew directly overhead, the blue sky turned to grey. They flew round and round in figure eights on parallel planes. Rhythmic swooping motions; rhythmic blinking of grey to blue to grey to blue. Soothing and hypnotic, these worlds lull me. I do not need to feel or relate anymore. There is no taste, no smell, no real physical sensation at all. These colors, patterns, and soundless sounds are not palpable, they satisfy something much more: an all-embracing, textureless-texture surrounding and infusing me; a silent rumble; complete enfolding emptiness.

When I was twelve years old, I read a short story called “Silent Snow, Secret Snow” about a boy who chooses to permanently inhabit his secret world. It impressed me. I had my own secret worlds. When I was fourteen years old I understood something clearly for the first time: I realized that I, too, could choose to stay in these worlds. They offered me refuge from emotional pain, safe from the unpredictability of others and life. I also understood that the price for this tempting balm was to surrender all emotions; to forfeit my capacity to relate or feel; to stop caring.

For the sake of joy, I declined the offer. I have suffered all the rest, including an unnameable sadness, so that I could still know joy. I have since come to believe that our humanity is fulfilled by this choice — to choose to suffer all the rest, again and again, to be broken and broken open, to feel our hearts mingling and entwined across time and circumstance so that through our deep care we can know a glorious, simple joy.