Years ago, at least over a decade on this date, Haff bought me a magnet that read, “Leap, and the net shall appear.” It lived on our fridge in NY, and then in Tel-Aviv, and then in the Golan. I think we finally got rid of it on our last purge, when we threw away everything that didn’t pass the “Do I want to send this in a transatlantic box” test, together with about eighty percent of our stuff, just before we leapt.
At the time, and for about a decade after, I thought it was pretty corny. But Haff kept referencing it with a knowing look in his eyes, his koan, every time we stood on the precipice of a big decision. Leap, and the net shall appear. And I’d smile back at him, if I was feeling magnanimous, but mostly sort of brush him off and hope the next thing he’d say was sensible and reassuring. Grounded. What was it with all this leaping? And imaginary nets?
To the naked eye, I guess, the past seventeen years of our shared lives might seem like a series of leaps. Certainly they’ve been unconventional and comparatively daring. But if I am honest, to me they mostly feel like semi-calculated free falls. Nothing has come close to the leap we took nine months and a day ago, when, with a running start, we rose high into the unknown.
For the last while, I’ve come to think of the goal of our current journey as finding the next lily pad. I cannot see the full path, or the way across this pond. Sometimes, when I can’t even see the next lily pad, I have to leap and believe that there will be one. And as terrifying and lonely as that is, it is also absolutely my favorite part of this journey. It is that leaping space that I dread and crave, in equal measures. It’s the leaping space that has taught me what Haff’s koan is all about. Really, it says: Have faith. Take action. Be brave. Be patient. Trust in more than yourself. Breathe.
So that’s what I’ve been doing, relatively well, for just over nine moons now. And most of you, most of my closest people, know very little about what’s been going on with us. Some don’t even know we left. Some don’t know where we are. Almost everyone doesn’t know how we got there, or what the hell we’re thinking. But after nine months of cocooning, I am finally feeling the urge to share. To write to stay in touch, to stay sane. To write to make space—a page of one’s own, if you will—my gift to myself, on this 38th (holy shit) birthday.
April 2018
All of the Worlds 