Sunday Candy #27

Tiny Changes & Primary Pleasures

Sandra Yvonne

Mar 27, 2023

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On walks, I seek tiny moments of quiet. But I’m always reminded that my mind is a loud word vessel, sloshing with alphabet soup, utterances, and expressions. Sometimes things overheard or things left unsaid.

And lately, like this morning, with every step, there’s these lyrics swirling in my head:

…and while I’m alive, I’ll make tiny changes to earth.

I’ve always believed I don’t need to do or be anything grand. That maybe I can simply make my tiny changes to the earth, bit by bit, day by day, in the background, quietly and honestly, in silence, away from prying eyes, curious minds, that it can be done, and that it can be enough. That it was the best way.

And I think back to Well-Intentioned-Teacher, when they said, “One day you will make an impact with your life,” and I couldn’t help but ask myself okay, but when? How? What does that look like? And can somebody please just show me the way?

Because the clock is drippy and the calendar is droopy, and days and time, together, they dance and collide, and here I am still waiting, still wondering, still anxiously tapping my pen, still bouncing my leg under a desk, still hoping for something. To make a difference. To make my impact. Questioning if an impact can ever really be mine to claim.

And I think of tiny changes, what they are and what they could be. And if I should settle for the tiny when there are so many big changes that need to take place?

But mostly, I wonder, if I’ll ever feel enough to simply be?

And so, I’m asking you, is it? Enough? Can you simply be?

Because with a soaring heart,

stealth-like mind,

& wandering eyes

I’m trying to figure out what I want in this little life.

I’m trying to figure out what I need in this little life.

I’m trying to figure out how to sustain myself in this little life.

Because if I’m going to be here, if I’m going to stay, then while I’m alive, I need to know that I can simply be.

And as The Observer, taking my mental notes, and my time. Studying the mechanics of how to live and not live a little life. I’m keenly watching, learning, and scheming. Interrogating everyone and everything.

I look at the world and I see that it's rife with people doing to impress people who are doing to impress people who are doing to impress people who are doing to impress people who are doing to impress people and ohymygod, it’s a circle jerk of endless doing and impressiveness.

And are we all impressed yet?

But then, I’m awe-struck. My eyes catch the hazy glow of orange sherbet spread like butter across the pretty morning sky and I daydream about how I’d love to sip wonder wine, watch flying fish shine, witness dolphins dive, marvel at the starry night, listen to rainbow rhymes, and like a heathen, be among the tricksters and the purveyors of pleasure, living to play on purpose.

I want a pilgrimage to nowhere, somewhere invisible to everyone but me.

I want makeshift magic, the headiness of an otherworldly plane, and the balminess of a soul so soft it soothes me back to sleep.

And a stranger once asked me if I was one of those “march to the beat of your own drum” types and I couldn’t help but laugh.

March? To drums? Please. That’s so militant. That’s not me. I’m not Yankee Doodle. I don’t aspire to march to anything.

Toss the macaroni. Because my soul? It yearns to dazzle and dance to explosive symphonies of color. Or is it chaos? Or maybe calm?

It yearns for the orchestral and the grand,

sometimes fuzz, distortion, no frills,

something swirly,

or guttural guitars,

something macabre to scare me alive.

& it yearns for small, quiet, gentle,

a barely-there melody,

a whisper.

And I’m not Icarus, but I’d like to be dangerously close to the sun, burning bright like its rays.

I’d love to cradle the moon,

touch and hold every star.

Kiss the sky.

Is that frivolous? It’s not to me.

And one day I came close, on a concrete bench, in a world where nothing feels concrete to me, I sat across from Pythagoras, a statue, sculpted with precision, and grace.

And he points to the sky,

so I gazed up,

and together we paint by numbers the cosmos.

He with his finger,

and me with my eyes.

And I sat hoping for answers to questions about the world’s expectations of me. But like the gradations in the sky, expectations only exist in my mind. And I wondered, if tiny moments, like this, alone, with myself, can be enough? Because it felt enough for me.

But the world screams that you’re not enough, you don’t exist if you go silent and unseen. And I love to disagree.

Because I want something other, something different, something smaller, something completely unknown to you and to me. I don’t know what that is, what that looks like, how to carve it, make it a path just for me.

But I know I’m unable to settle for less than what feels meant for me. And though I don’t know what I’m doing, I try to be steady, patient, and honest, with myself, and everything.

And I tell myself I’ll figure it all out, eventually, along the way.

Because like origami,

I’m still bending,

folding,

becoming,

making tiny changes,

and still deciding

what I’ll make of me.