Scatter gold dust...

There is a line in a poem by Rumi, "scatter gold dust all over the world".  A year or so ago I was considering getting that line tattooed on me.  I recently read a line in one of Yann Martel's books (I know, I know, I'm referencing him again but what can I say? He makes me think, learn and feel!) "Beatrice and Virgil", that said we "parcel out the earth".  In countries.  In boundaries.  In labels.  It's one of my favorite lines of the book, one of those pieces of poetry that I have said before stick to me, adding itself to the book that is me and pops up every now and again.

Thinking about that line spun into another realization. How we parcel ourselves over the earth, how we scatter our gold dust.

I long to travel.  I long to live everywhere and see everything and experience as much as I possibly can. The want fills me to my flesh.  It can barely fit.


"When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn't know.  "Oh sure you know", the photographer said.  "She wants", Said Jay Cee wittily, "to be everything." 
- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar


I also have a path to travel and I am aware I may or may not be able to fit certain things into this lifetime.  I understand the choices I make and want to make change over time and that it might not quite work out that I can squeeze every bit of life out in this go round.

But that it's simply a matter of choices.
We either do, or we don't.  Because we feel this way, or that.
And so it goes.

The other day the idea that we're already scattered all over the world hit me, satisfied and comforted me.  I thought about all the places I've been.  And I haven't been many, but think about every time you've stepped away.  To the mountains, to the ocean, to another city, another state.  A museum.  A library.  A zoo.  Think about every person, pet, or part of nature you've ever encountered that has impacted you on a large or small scale.  Or the strangers we pass all day, every day.  Every encounter has meant energy was exchanged.  You left a part of you and gained a part of them.  And then I remembered that we breathe the same air.  The same atoms making up the molecules that the dinosaurs breathed.  That Jesus Christ breathed.

We really are all one.  

I started thinking about the parts of me I've scattered so far.  I thought about a line in a poem I wrote nearly ten years ago, and how I understand what I was saying then in a richer way now "...I compare you and contrast you to the last life I lived and remember nights of cosmopolitans and wooden floors and smile to myself knowing I left behind teardrops all over the streets of New York..."

We're scattering and parceling at all times.  Right this very second.

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