Abandon, vol 2

Abandon (verb) 1. To leave someone behind. Perhaps a love you have outgrown and have grown strong enough, at last, to leave. How clear that seems in hindsight, how perilous at the time.

Abandon (verb) 2. To leave a place because of danger—more emotional than physical, but danger all the same. And then to land in Rome. Its rain-streaked streets gleaming in lamplight. Brutal beauty. Bedlam with exquisite taste. What it’s like is to hear and not to understand, to be and not belong…

Abandon (verb) 3. To renounce something. To reject beliefs that have not served you well, to break old patterns without a clear plan. A feeling of falling. A sense of being a little unhinged, your life upside down. Freedom. Exhaustion. Terror. Hope.

Abandon (verb) 4. To give up control of something. The fluency you took for granted, maybe, in your native tongue. All these Italians speaking Italian! Even the babies—they must be so smart. And all the voices of the world down through the centuries bouncing off these ancient walls. Que bella!

Abandon (verb) 5. To halt something in progress—just stop it in its tracks. Perhaps the life you’ve always known, the easy familiarity of the culture you’ve been breathing all these years. The electric tension in that pause. What now?

Abandon (verb) 6. To give in, to strong emotion. To weep and laugh, to shout, to unlock the gates and let it all go. To pour all that into your work, your art, your awakened life. To open the wooden shutters and let in the sun.

Abandon (noun) 1. This is you becoming now. There may be an exuberant lack of restraint. Because this is the art of surrender, the pleasure of giving in, of throwing yourself into the river of life over and over. This is an incurable condition marked by feelings of relief, a growing capacity for love, and quiet moments of pure joy. A clear sense of coming home.

                      ~Ginny Hoyle