Heavier than Heaven

Image: Anna Esterina, Panama

"The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?"

- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Named after it's own abundance, Panama overflows with fullness and demands more. The land felt alive with hunger, thirst, and desire. Panama seemed an abyssal appetite.

I lacked the appetite but I fed on it anyhow. The people were engaging. The landscape was breathtaking. The sightseeing and activities were plentiful.

I pressed my ear to hot beach sand and heard a drumming heartbeat. I swam in warm Pacific waters and felt blood rushing fast. At night, the whispers on the thick air infected my dreams. Panama was voracious and I was at its peril.

I could feel my temperature rising. Panama was a fever burning away at my toxicity.

This Panamanian paradise was the epitome of lightness. The resort life lacked any burden. It was a pleasureable existence that voided the mind. And I needed it.

Appropriately, I was carrying Milan Kundera's, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, with me at the insistence of my philosopher friend. Kundera's existential plot is written opposite Nietzsche's concept of eternal return. The characters treat love and sex lightly and as based on coincidence. Their linear lives of lightness lack the happiness that comes with the heavy burden of making decisions in lives of repetition.

In Panama I found some center of gravity that I'd been missing. I became grounded. And I found myself missing the weight of being. For the first time in a very long time, the girl who is always in flight longed to return home.

I'm happy to be home, darlings.

xoxo,
ae