Somewhere inside of you something waits.
You may know exactly what this thing is, may have named it, and even filled in the lines of it with color and texture. You may have it picture-perfect and clearly defined.
Or, it may be vague, fuzzy, a nudging that won’t stop its slight push; it may be a threshold thing, powerful and lingering at a door you can’t quite open yet.
First, don’t worry that you will lose this thing. Nothing will escape you; it won’t slip away and run wild until its lost and gone. It’s going nowhere.
You can’t even lose this thing by ignoring it; no matter how many times the soft lobe of your ear moves closer to your shoulder in an almost invisible hunch of trying to turn away; it’s still inside you.
It curls down and settles, drawing life and breath and sustenance in a quiet place of it’s-almost-time. It doesn’t set aside. It isn’t dead. It waits for you.
It would wait forever, though it won’t take you that long. It will pace and putter the important path of seeming inattention. It will wait as you purposefully move through every single ritual of preparing to attend to the thing, while not yet actually getting to it.
The rituals of this kind of inactivity are endless. And frequently very active, very busy, very full of to-do and get-done. Go ahead, play them out. When you’re finished, the thing you want, the thing that speaks to you as must, whatever it is, will still be here. It will be closer to you than this paper in your hands, closer to you than your reading of this. Closer still and waiting.
Stall as long as you wish. Potential is patient. This want, this need, this have-to and dream that took root in you long ago is also patient.
Take the necessary time to play out your rituals, whatever they may be.
A roomful of perfect maybe? Go to the store and peruse the paint chips, fan them in your hand like cards. Take them home, stick them up with tape and watch them change shade, tone and mood. The sun moves across your wall each afternoon without fail.
You feel an overwhelming need to rearrange, to make room. You will find yourself moving this here and that there. You will sort and pile and throw away. You will feel as though you are setting a scene of some sort. All this seemingly dichotomous directed/erratic/directive/erratic movement is OK. It’s better than that, in fact; it’s necessary. Make your perfects all around; the thing inside of you will not die.
Next, let yourself linger. Let yourself do the hard work of almost-there, of ponder, of imagine and worry and fear. You will argue with yourself, you “should” yourself, and “what-if” yourself. In your too-full and tired moments, you will flat out tell yourself words like crazy, dumb, can’t, won’t, should not and too late.
Finally, when you are ready, you will feel something inside you move slightly, even though you are still standing perfectly still.
And then you will know it’s time to step lightly toward the door. What waits there is an old friend by now. What waits there is familiar and yours. You reach for it, take your arm around its shoulders, and draw it nearer.
A powerful and gentle man once told me his wish, his dream, his heart-goal. He grew just slightly flustered and a little embarrassed as he spoke, as if this thing in him that he had to do would pull him into uncharted territory, which, of course, it would. He spoke as if the thing made him nervous, yet I could tell by his words it was as much a part of him as his deep breath, his twitches, the blink of his eyes. He knew the taste of it.
Finally he said to me — and I remember how he turned his palms up at that moment, the tips of his fingers rounded to make his empty hands like a cup. “Who am I to try such a thing? How dare I?”
For a moment I thought I’d cry. My response to him: “How dare you not?”
E-mail Fort Collins poet and writer Natalie Costanza-Chavez at grace-notes@comcast.net. Read more of her essays at .
