Morning palette

This morning, I’m not so sure how I am feeling. It’s a mixture of feelings, somehow intense yet sweet and soft, powerful and yet not overwhelming.

Usually, I feel one or two emotions or states of mind very clearly, often even very intensely, like an intense and colorful stroke of oil paint on a white canvas. Sometimes, my emotions are more like pastel colors or the delicate light at dawn, but still quite definite towards one particular shade or tonality. But not today, not this morning: this morning it’s more like a delicate, hazy grey (like the marine layer outside my windows); but not an apathetic grey: it’s charged and carrying something — I’m not sure exactly what it’s carrying, though. 

There is some sense of relief and relaxation that has been growing steadily within me since I and many people in my group of friends/acquaintances have got the COVID vaccine. My life style has changed, really improved and gone “back to normal” in many practical ways. Which in turn has led me to feel that I have come alive again. This is probably — hopefully — a shared experience for many persons now. 

On top of this, though, there is also another level of “coming out” for me which took a great leap a little over five years ago, when I finally left Europe and moved to California to pursue my dreams. And on top of that, due to some more recent specific circumstances and readings and conversations, this “coming out” is reaching a very important phase for me now — I can feel something ready to “leap out” of somewhere inside me mixed with the need to keep it safe while it’s still vulnerable. 

But then there are also thoughts and feelings with respect to the rest of the world. Concern and a sense of injustice as, once again, it seems to me that the privilege of power and money is striking within this pandemic. My relief and happiness are tinted with sadness and concern and even anger if I look outside my “fortunate bubble”: the tragedies in India or, even closer to me, the fact that my own mother living in Europe, although being a teacher and over 70 years old, was able to get her first Moderna shot only yesterday… 

So then that quote from Fannie Lou Hamer comes to my mind: “Nobody’s free until we’re all free”… 

“Nobody’s safe (from COVID, or anything else, really) until we’re all safe”.