To Extend Myself

A Summary on Rome, Intimacy and Mass

Rome is extraordinarily balmy, like someone has smeared the city in floral honey. Honeysuckle and jasmine in bloom at every corner, warm terracotta walls. June it is. It will be before the devastating heatwave, before the two equally devastating earthquakes in Venezuela and before Spain wins The World Cup, which I will only come to understand, a day too late, as a win for humanity because I don’t watch sports. In each their own way, these three happenings will remind us that the law of the Earth is cause and effect and we can decide whether or not we want to participate.

Last time I was here, in Rome, it was artichoke season and I was cold, wrapped in cashmere. Father Bob was not Pope Leo XIV. Now he is. I said I was cold, but did I say I was uncomfortable? Now I am pleasantly warm, it is before the heatwave I said, and I am wearing plant-dyed silk. I arrive in Rome with the sort of hope you possess with the promise of something; not ripe quite yet, just a slight reveal as something that holds a lot of potential for magic. I am, however, aware that I shall not try to define magic, as much as I should try to experience it, or even cultivate it. My friend and I arrive at our apartment, which is located behind a heavy, wooden medieval door, tucked away on the corner of a palm tree garden and a mural of the Holy Mother. The door is ancient both in matter and making. It is only possible to open it if you lean your entire bodyweight into the block of wood. I find here another symbol for life: to lean with your full body into something, in order for it to open before you.

I was nauseous earlier in Palma de Mallorca airport for reasons I can only think of as the combination of too runny an egg paired with avocado and a milky coffee. This is a combination of enzymes that make for favorable nausea. I therefore have not eaten anything besides said egg, ginger gum and a ginger ale, that needless to say, I didn’t eat, but drank, during my travel from one part of the Mediterranean to another. Therefore, I arrive in Rome hungry. We go to the small supermarket which, even for a fellow European, is a gastronomic experience extraordinaire. We buy ripe figs, peaches, cubed parmigiano, cured meats, big green olives, which my friend will continue to speak of as “aromatic,” and sparkling water. The tall, wooden window sill makes for a perfect bar, where we spread out the delight, eating to the sight of the mural of The Holy Mother. I might be entirely enchanted by the Roman spell, but in the moment I fill my mouth with fig and cheese, even the sound of the ambulance sounds romantic to me.

We leave the apartment; I am dressed in silk and my eyes framed in the deep aubergine-colored kohl that I have owned for 10 years, but just started using daily now. It is here now I experience a thick sweetness in the air, induced by floral fragrance and some sort of specific sensuality secreting from the streets of Rome. I feel it coming off my skin too. More life seems to be available to me. It moves through me. To think that the liberation should be to be without a body, when it is in the body we get to contain all of life. What a misunderstanding, is it not?

I have left the jungle for 2.5 months to spend my summer in Europe. It is the longest I have been gone from my new home in 1.5 years. Prior to this exotic hiatus, the rhythm of my life was usually designed for a somewhat constant departing and arriving, existing somewhere in between. First I thought it was initiated by modeling, a job that required full-time traveling, and a job I did for 16 years. But then I remembered, I have lived between multiple homes my entire life, and while certain things change as we tear off the petals, to become bud and blossom anew, other things can indeed remain the same — not unchanged, but same. It is from this place, bared naked, I have come to realize and accept: I love to exist between the suspense of places. There is a friction of dynamic novelty that invites me to be observant and curious. This kinda pep in my step, that makes me walk the extra mile, you know? I keep thinking of this one therapist who said she saw me living in the woods, resting on my couch, night after night. She thought my love for dynamism was a lack of what she called “Inner Peace.”

Peace, not unknown to me. But rarely on the couch.

Can I tell you a little bit about where I find peace?

Peace I have found is not dependent on a never-changing environment, whether inside or out, nor is it even dependent on exterior quiet; it is entirely dependent on my own ability to broaden myself in such a way that I can entail all of life, but hold on to none. To meet here, life, with the fullness of my body, from the fullness of my body. Peace I have found in places where you don’t look for peace. I have rarely found it on the couch, tucked away from life. I can, if I will, find peace, anywhere.

It is true, I tell you. Because I keep finding it.

I sit now on a rooftop in Rome, drinking Campari, my lips taste like cigarettes, Vogues, and I feel such peace. Here is perhaps a setting seen as vain, but to me it is not; I breathe real air. I don’t know anyone, I barely know Rome. I know a few things. I know I’m taking a liking to the artist who works with flowers, and also to the painter who reads tarot. Less of a liking I’m taking to the man who turns out to be a niche superstar, but it doesn’t disturb my peace. I used to feel an existential anxiety being around people, who in my mind I’d categorize as not “real.” My own sense of belonging in this world, as in I am made of something real, rooted in something real — we could call it peace? I’d let it be entirely up to the passing circumstances of strangers and their ability to meet my requirements of real. That turned out to be a very fragile way of being in the world. Such gut-wrenching angst could only lead to two outcomes: defeat or peace. So, I chose the latter. It became an existential necessity to find a way to stay movable and touchable in the world, but still somewhat unshakable by it too. To stay in the sea of humanity, but to not be swallowed by it. I am stubborn, so I decided to give myself a task, because liberation is found in labor. I must be able to make anything real, shall I possess enough heart and apply enough effort to do so. I can, can I not, when I remember who I am. Could I have not been less uncomfortable, albeit still cold even in cashmere, that last time I was in Rome, had I had the courage to bring myself, and not the shell of self, to the dinner table?

This is my way of saying: peace, if not found anywhere, it can be cultivated in most places.

The next day I wrap my shoulders in the brown shawl I’ve worn for many ceremonies; a fabric that is partially woven of cotton and partially woven of prayers, as I enter the Basilica. It is the same shawl I was told to wear when I go to the underworld.

It is hot, apparently so, but a new state of being is taking over me, which is: I feel the heat but I am not debilitated by it. I used to be sensitive to fluctuations in sensations; hunger, thirst, tiredness, heat. Don’t misunderstand me, I feel the edge of being human, I am just no longer dependent on it to the point of not functioning. It has become a meditation; again, I said, I like to exist between the suspense of places — it can also be the suspense of heat and hunger.

A simplicity I have found in naming sensations and feeling them, then only to move on with my life.

I say this because, beyond immediate reaction to sensation — a state we could easily find ourselves being preoccupied with at all times — we are invited to experience something of much greater subtlety and serenity. Are we not all invited? I sense the invitation in many places, but also here now accompanied by 1,000 people in the church, standing before four spiraling pillars covered in gold. What am I? What are we? Can I say we are one? Can I say we are one of many? Can I not say that we are part of it all? Define unity to me? I feel the experience of what I am is stretching beyond confined ideas of ribs and cages, skull and brain.

Instead of being busy with how many bodies I am sharing the space with, or if I am cold, hot, hungry or thirsty, I am entirely taken by this:

I see there is a specific way the light shines through the chapel which makes it look holy. Sacred places are built to enhance the sense of divinity and grandeur in mind; is it slight manipulation or thoughtful orchestration for the light to come through? Is divinity grand? Is it subtle? Is it all? Is it less holy of an act to place yourself in the projected light? I remember when the sky opened before me, walking down Kilimanjaro, and the sun shone down upon me in such a way, I had to accept it as a benediction. Here in the church, the light shines just the same; why should it be less sacred, to willingly walk into the light? Most things sacred are an effect of the cause of extending ourselves, is it not?

I find a lot of sacredness in the word and the action: to extend. The word itself, I can hardly explain, but inside of me is such a feeling of utter revelation, when I speak it. Oh, to extend oneself. I cried watching “Hamnet,” when Agnes extends her hands towards the stage, towards Shakespeare. This moment to me was a moment of willingness and reverence, all pointing to the fact that love is also an action. I have been unnerved many times passing through the threshold of extending myself in a way that was unknown to me. I have found peace, to speak about peace, in extending my fascia, my heart and my mind.

So it is here in the Basilica, I extend myself, I extend my curiosity when I see that there is mass in 17 minutes.

72 hours ago I learned that my friend Cecilia, who is Roman but lives in Madrid, and wore a veil of lace when I first met her 8 years ago in Mallorca, is a practicing Catholic and goes to mass every Sunday. And so, I was intrigued to experience a ritual for myself, that was meaningful to my friend (and 1.422 billion people). My life has become entirely rich and generous by following the willingness to extend myself, while in the process of such, knowing where I begin and someone else ends.

My friend and I make our way to the front row of the chapel, which is definitely not called front row in the local church tongue, but I will keep my own personal flair to the new rooms to stay close to my own body too. It is something I have learned is crucial to extend. I must know where I am extending from, shall I need to return. I have more than once entered spaces seemingly sacred, only to think I needed to let go of my own entirety, as an act of sacrifice. I won’t do that anymore. So I sit front row, wrapped in prayers from other traditions (but a prayer is a prayer, is it not?) and I take off my sandals to feel the cold marble on the soles of my feet.

When we all stand up to sing hallelujah, this is the moment I learn something new about church and divinity practices. I cannot put it into words, I can just say: I humbly begin to understand. I understand why we have tried to capture something so intangible in marble, in words and in song. And because we humans have tried to capture something so Spirited in something confined, either by matter or words, it is inevitably flawed.

Human beings are flawed. But we are also good.

An Irish Catholic woman leans over while everyone but me stands in line for communion: “You can cross your hands over your chest if you don’t want communion. They will give you a blessing instead.” And it is not that I didn’t want communion, but that I am shy and uncertain how invited I am into this one house of God? I am always shy when the invitation is unspoken, and there it is, that I must extend myself, step one inch closer. I receive my blessing, and on the other side of the rush of intensity, I feel a newfound intimacy with life. It is here in my hands extending, it is here in my reaching heart, and I hear: We are all invited.