Seems fitting that I’m posting this just a few hours before getting on a plane to return to the United States. It’s taken me four and a half months to cut this video – mainly because it brings the memories back in a way that really, really affects me. I’ve never created something that so closely approximated life itself to me. I have no idea if anyone else will see this, or understand it – probably not? Since we all have completely different experiences. But maybe somehow, somewhere there will be some connection.

I’ve been up all night finishing work and packing, which is good because it leaves me less time to think.

I have no idea what will happen this time.

I remember now what I felt on that last bus back from Reading, PA to New York City.

It was purest love.

It was the understanding that I could take care of myself. It was the knowledge (from some faculty that could comprehend what the mind could not) that everything was going according to plan – even if it didn’t seem such on the surface. It was finality – that I experienced what I had to experience and that the experience was ending. That I could choose to let go completely – and that that would feel wonderful. Like soaring. Like being guided. (This would prove extremely difficult in the next few months and I would struggle immensely with it.)

It was the knowledge that I would return. Because it was only natural to do so. I found my place in this world. It took years and years of searching and freaking out thinking that I might never find what I was looking for. Years of uncertainty (but absolute certainty on some deep level). It took years of darkness, meaninglessness. But I finally found something that put everything into perspective, that made all those years worthwhile.

I carried that something in my heart for the next five months. Knowing it was there made certain that I could never again sink to the depths to which I used to before. I knew that I would return, somehow.

And now I make my way back.

“And it’s love that holds you / You can never let it go”

Words from music that led me to New York City in the first place. Words I lived by when I was there. Words that lead me back – the realization that we are not the doers but that we live, breathe and have our being in something else entirely.

And in the moments that we can truly sense our connection to this something else, everything makes sense and we override all thoughts of fear, uncertainty and lack completely.

It’s not just about New York – it’s about life ultimately and the universe and how I regained my faith in everything after having lost it for so long that I really believed I would die miserably never knowing it again. But yet, simultaneously, on a deeper level always knowing that the beauty of the world was so immense that it would inevitably find it’s way through the cracks.

Video I shot while waiting for a flight at JFK and transiting at Narita. Also posted on YouTube if you prefer that.