this, that, and the other thing.

an ode to friendship and the human experience

a note from the author, before the poem to the poem ↓

Where I come from, a story is not finished until the teller turns to the listeners and accounts for himself. So let me account.

I wrote this in the days after a retreat on Kauai, before the feeling could fade. I arrived as a man who had spent years learning how to build and how to strive, but had quietly forgotten how to rest, and how to be held by people who wanted nothing from me but my company. The island, and the people I met on it, reminded me. This poem is what I carried home.

To the facilitators who held us with such care, thank you. You did not merely organize a retreat. You midwifed something none of us will forget.

To my friends, my now family from all over this good earth, this one is for you. You know who you are.

And a prayer, in the tradition of my mother's house. May we continue to be blessed, protected, and led. May we experience this life in the most beautiful way it can be experienced, with open hearts and laughter that finds us even in hard seasons. May love keep finding us, again and again, until we meet once more.

With love and gratitude,
Tachi

the poem

we did not come because it was easy
(we came with more questions
than luggage, each of us
carrying our separate weathers,
our little locked rooms of doubt)
what will this be?
who will i be here?
nervous and hoping in the same breath,
but faith is a door
that only opens
from the inside
and so we jumped(all of us,
strangers from everywhere,
hearts held out like open hands)
into the unknown
the mountain did not ask our names
it only said, climb.
the ocean did not ask our stories
it only said, come.
and we did the uncomfortable things.
climbed what scared us,
paddled into what humbled us,
said the true and trembling things out loud,
and somewhere in all that
beautiful difficulty,
bridges
hand found hand across the stream
and laughter found laughter
and the difficult became
the beautiful became
the shared
o me! o life! we might have asked,
what good, all this striving,
all these separate lives
rushing past each other?
and the answer came(not in words
but in a hand reaching back,
in a circle of breath and song,
in strangers becoming family
on a beach at the edge of the world)
the answer, that we are here.
that under every different face
there beats the same unreasonable
astonishing
heart
that this stranger and that stranger
and the other thing we cannot name
(call it love, call it
the sea remembering itself
in every separate wave)
are one
and though we scatter now
to our separate corners of the earth,
hear me.
we shall meet again,
in every story told,
in every dream that wanders back
to this green island,
every remembering
a reunion
for love keeps no distance
and love keeps no time
so go(you who climbed,
you who jumped, you who opened)
go louder than your doubt,
go wider than your fear,
carry this,
this joy, that laughter, the other thing
too big for words,
carry it like a torch
into every room you enter
we are bound now.
friends for life.
the powerful play goes on
and we, together,
have written our verse
now,
what will yours be?
— tachi