emergency above.

oh three. fifteen. oh nine. two. sixteen. pea. em.

I am in the grass on a patchwork of blankets with the women of the Conexsh. My friend Cait calls this place Break Up Park, but no one here is leaving anyone else.
It is Sunday, and half of us are no longer opening our eyes.

All weekend I have been full of this feeling… with no sure words to describe it. This morning, Track*3 began with seventeen seconds of guitar chords—those chords show exactly how I’m feelin. Also, yesterday, I got my hair cut. I leaned my sore shoulders back into the sink. Eyes closed, I caught the smell of lemony shampoo and thought… Lemons: This feeling is like the smell of lemons.
Both of these conclusions yield no further answers, only sounds and smells.

However, there is one discernable change in my senses—these past few days I have been awake to my breathing, stretching, aching. I have become very aware of my body. This is new to me—to be in touch with my temperature, my muscle energy, my connecting bones. This weekend, I perceive my footsteps. I swim laps and feel the rhythm. Reach, CHURN, Kick, Reach, CHURN, Kick… my breath escaping into the water… my angling arms… I am a tribal drum inside of Gold’s Gym. touch. turn. pushhhh.

After the pool, I am rock climbing—my legs lend themselves to my arms. I am forced to find my center, and then send strength outward in four directions. Right. Left. Pull. Stretch. This too is a rhythm, a dissonant octopoda song.
Even my toes are connected to my wrists by a wriggling line that bends and contracts between them. I dig my fingers into a distant hand-hold, and feel something new as I pull myself upward— within my forearms, tendons stretch like strange vertical strings, like there is a fret board in my forearm. They are side-by-side, but pull me individually. I think they are playing the chords to Track*3—it pulses me, finally, to the top, where I look down at Brooklyn and say, without much thought, “I’m ready.” She releases the rope and I fall in waves back to the people below.
I have ascended. I am tying knots to do it again.

Last week the wind went yelling through campus. It was at my back, then slowing my path, then pulling me north.
We were everywhere, the wind and I. She stirred the dust of the earth, hazing the air between me and the mountains, distorting my view of everything far away. Students swayed inside of her puzzling path, awoken from their sleeping Wednesday patterns.
“ENTER HERE,” I heard her tell us.
“The coming days will shake your certainties. Blow around in the beauty of risk.”
She was permeating and without apology, like the neon scent of lemons. I look down and say, without much thought,
“I am ready.”
Since that day, I have been falling in waves.

But today, something is amiss.

Track*3: Seventeen Seconds of Chords