11:11
I shuffle off a rogue eyelash before it touches my eyeball. It lands on the pad of my finger. I blow it towards the honey wood of my floor.
Does a wish still count if it doesn’t disappear from your sight?
I know the lash is sitting on the floor right beside me. As I type this on my laptop, in my full-size bed within my childhood bedroom, nonetheless.
Not everything has to be about you being in your childhood bedroom.
But it does.
Because I'm in it. And the amount of times I’ve wished here is enough for the whole floor to be covered in dark eyelashes. But, my mother comes and sweeps the rooms of the house every week and my wishes are swiftly tossed into the trash. Perhaps, set out into the world to roam. Depending on which way you look at it.
I’m alone — yet fiercely together. Firmly attached to my family unit. The three of us haven’t lived in unison like this since I was 18. Until right before I shipped myself off to California. Now I’ve shipped myself back approximately 11 years later.
11 whole years.
I remember making a mega ultra wish on 11/11/11 at 11:11pm. Who even knows what I garbled up hoping to come true? Every time I try to make a wish at 11:11 I can never settle on one. My mind rushes through every option that could possibly change my life and fumbles through them like a mad dash. If you could hear my thoughts they would be breathy gibberish. I don’t think the gods have been able make out what I’ve been saying.
They should teach you in church to enunciate and focus on only one clear prayer. That way god could really hear you. I’m not religious, however, I do like thinking of the universe as “the gods”.
I’m one of those who believe in the universe. The spiritual laws of success? No, just the spiritual laws. Well maybe of success, too. Sorry, I’ve just been having an aversion to spiritual ascension tied to material success. Not that I don’t want material success, believe me, I do — it’s just that I believe in some way I’ve already reached a spiritual oasis of sorts.
In the past, I found a way to live where I barely had to work, had a breath of money to survive, and mostly spent my days aimlessly walking around and writing. Sitting in the sun, taking in the world, until it all became too much and I had to write the experience down in my fresh Moleskine notebook.
Why am I telling you these things? Ah yes, because I still wasn’t happy. It pains me to say this. I wasn’t being put to use. And to live, happily, you must be. Life needs some contrast. You do need a bit of work in you to stir the magic. I guess, the um, success of the spiritual. I don’t think I’ve tasted the full reward of spiritual success. Though I did receive bountiful gifts of presence, of gaining a perspective of the world with a twinkle in my eye, and an idea of how to cure restlessness by reaching into the electricity of living.
I could be meant to just float on forever, taking notes of things in my journal, and crying at each thought. But like I said, life needs some contrast. And I needed something to offset that beauty. I had to put myself to use. So that’s what I’m doing here. I’m putting myself to use.
I shipped myself back home to my parents to figure out how to put myself to use.
I’m not interested in making sense, but I’ve come to realize, you might have to. It does make your life move with more gusto. Maybe the key is pairing my senselessness with some rock-hard sense. Just a teensy bit. Enough to even out my life and give me something to stand on. Something for me to hand to people to say “Yes, I am a real person and I can prove it to you”— but deep down I’ll know I’m embedded in the senseless, still. It is the bed I sleep in and make every day (often refusing to make).
I think I’m back in this old room because somewhere within there is still that 18-year-old child. Now, I think, I really think, that child still has a mission. She might need to leave the room because wishes need messengers. She can’t just stay wistfully blowing eyelashes onto the floor. When she knows they need to be outside for something to happen to them. For them to be taken by the gods. She can’t wait for her mother to sweep the floor and place them in the trash. For them to maybe have a chance of getting outside.
I think what I have to do, and why I have been sent back here for myself, is to search the ground for the lashes that are still left. Then to flurry my fingers over my eyelids to see if there are any more, and count my wishes like crumpled, soft bills in a wallet. Lay them out and give each of them a clear goal, name, and intention. You will be for the book I publish. You will be for the house I buy my parents. You will be for my life in New York. All of these little hairs holding large dreams.
That I will take out on my own, when the sun rises, to set them out for the day. To set them free into the air. Each day I will work to feed the dream of those little lashes. For the mere thought of them coming true. They will do their spiritual work outside as I do mine. Along with my hard work. Both of us together will make something extraordinarily special. Because something different is now occurring. I am not so senseless. I am not just waiting for the air to appear and change my fate. I’m moving, and breaking, building, a world around me.
I hope one day all of this will come true. That I’ll somehow remember my dream on 11/11/11 at 11:11 pm because the realization will rush into me that all of this time it had just been ideas of a future I did not know how to comprehend. I jumbled the words of my wishes because I was experiencing feelings, sensations I could not name. And every time on 11:11 afterward, I was reaching for answers when the questions had never been asked. Instead left to wish on a bounty of feelings erupting underneath me asking to be understood. A panting ball of fears, hopes, wishes, thoughts, exclamations, and beliefs. All of it tunneling around at once. For those 60 golden seconds. Until the wish zone would time out. And the ball of neuroses would float away. Would become a distant memory. A ball thrown into the abyss.
With me, still not understanding what it is I was wishing for.
I think we’re afraid to really hear ourselves. To hear what we really want. Because there’s a strong chance it won’t match up with the life we’ve imagined. Or it might be in a language we don’t understand. In a tongue we don’t recognize and haven’t taught ourselves yet. And maybe all of this has been an act of self-sabotage. The lack of definition I have surrounded myself with. The resignation that I simply will not understand. Because if I do not define anything, then anything can happen. But in reality, nothing will happen.
This sounds harsh. Things have happened. But none so grand as those which I have imagined while wishing on this bed. Even if the dreams were unintelligible. I know they were still grand. Maybe it’s that I never learned how to wish. I was never taught the part where you have to pick apart the feelings. That you have to take the eyelash outside yourself and that you have to speak really clearly to them of the few, solid things you want. And the grace to ask yourself why you want them. So that the gods can hear all of this too.
Then you have to turn around, go right back home, and work really hard. You have to forget that the gods might have heard you. Because the next eyelash that falls you’ll be taking her right outside to tell them about too. You still might not understand so clearly what it is you want but it is the fact each day you are trying to understand yourself.
A wish is not an escape, it is a commitment to something within. Through them you will grow closer to touching your evolving definition of self. Even as it is ever-changing. Because at least at this moment you have a self worth striving for. In this micro-phase of life, which amounts to macro-phases of life, you decided to hear yourself. You didn’t wait for the world to mold you and push you into a compartment of what to become and what to say to an eyelash when it falls. Because you’re finally sweeping the floor clean. You're leaving the room. You’re holding your published novel in your hands. You’re buying your parents a perfect new house. You’re living in New York, or Paris, or anywhere in the world.
And you understand why you wanted all of this.
I guess what I’m meaning to say as I spill out all these thoughts is that I’m learning how to drive to at least one destination. I don’t focus on trekking across the state, or the country, or the whole world. I just master my route to the grocery store. To the coffee shop. To the mall. The ice cream parlor. I slowly map out the path of my immediate surroundings. I slowly map out the interior of myself. These answers I reach towards and now have access to. That this is how I pilot my new life. Not thinking of the grand mileage, or the grand self, and getting jumbled there — but of marking out the small trips I can slowly learn to master without pulling the navigation out on my phone.
I just want to be of full of use. I want a full hand. I want to give and be given. There are things, I am taking the time to understand, that I want to create.
So I may return balanced, to the life of walking aimlessly under the sun, pen in hand, touching the paper.
May our wishes come true!
Keep going, you are on the right path. Love you 🥰