The realization that submission, for me, is only a way to retain power, not to surrender it, as I once thought. This false surrender to someone else is a way of refusing to surrender to who I am, holding everything at such a distance, even my own thoughts and feelings. I am get so worked up in my abstractions, trying to convey my inner experience, a life of metaphysical ideas, that I neglect the simple embodied experience, where most of the truth lies, and all the portals to the infinite that cannot be found by looking. I would like to simply be in my body for a while. This may require action.

The anger of being asked to describe a physical sensation — I can only produce one or two words (warm, nice) that are obviously inadequate but safe for the reason. If I really tried to describe the sensation, the description would never cover it, would produce the wrong idea, would even replace the memory. And yet, once forced to say something, anything, it feels wonderful to have the listener agree — yes, that feeling feels something like those words for them, too.

I wish I could say more and more about such sensations: how putting my hand on your skin feels like dipping it under running water, like the surfaces are pierced with tiny holes and there is light and fluid passing through, back and forth as the surfaces sink into one another, and it seems that I am touching you from the inside and after a while there is no accounting for the direction of flow or whose skin is whose or where the warmth is coming from.

Having dreams where I am accidentally propelled much too high in the air, so high that I know I will die when I hit the ground, but after accepting certain death, the feelings of floating and lightness are incredible, and there is nothing terrifying about the view of the city below me, even as I am rapidly plummeting toward it. Somehow, after all this, I always manage to land softly, even though it is impossible.