Turn On.

Yesterday, laid amongst the beating bodies of my dearest friends, clutching one’s finger tip and tracing my nail on one’s knee, I suddenly realised. A thread of thought weaved its way through my mind. & in that moment nothing else mattered.

‘I am so turned on by life!’

This thought arrived in my mind, and left just a quickly. I blurted it out as I couldn’t wait to share it. Friends gazing back at me oozing with awe at the words that had just burst from my mouth. In that moment, sandwiched between the darker moments that had come before and the lonelier moments that may still come, just BEING in life turned me on.

It gave me goosebumps on my spine and a smile on my lips for no ‘reason’ at all. It gave me butterflies in my stomach and an excitement for the unknown.

Wrapped up in the love of beautiful people’s words and the last light of the day. Sun setting over the magical land of Sintra.

There was no sex, games, playing around, questioning, jumping through hoops, glances under eyelashes, footsie, late night booty calls, or ‘….’ To tell me you’re writing back but then you change your mind. The story of being turned on and turning on left at the door. It was the simplicity of life that turned me on, on this warm Sunday afternoon.

‘Turned on’ a taboo topic in the mundane of the day to day. Normally left to plush red velvet and black lace underwear. To the dark nights under the covers of the lairs with the windows closed and to the ‘just about awake’ mornings with the curtains fluttering like butterfly wings against the barely open window.

Locked away like the key to Pandora’s box. So far out of reach that it can only be referred to when thrown into sex, drugs & rocknroll.

‘Turn on’ a verb? An adjective? A noun?

A desire? A want? A craving?

Forgive me if I’m wrong but isn’t it that we could all do with allowing the simplicities of life ‘turn us on’ instead of leaving it to the shadows in the nights and locked away for only our partner to discover.

A calling to feel so innately connected to our body and breath and others and food and the present moment that all else falls away.

But yet we are told to get on and finish the to do list.

Look ahead and outside of the innate wisdom that shows us where we should really be.

Numb and frozen. Or open and alive.

Small and afraid, or heard and seen.

Because when I desperately clasp onto these moments of ‘turn on’ they seem to fade away

Like a whisper on the end of my tongue. Heard only by those that want to hear it.

But really the game is about playing large. Opening up. Letting the world see who I really am. ‘Turn on’ only comes in those moments of letting go.

When the holding onto what ‘should’ be dissipates into the background.

For a long time I let the fear of showing how turned on I was by life over ride the very essence of being turned on.

Gazing eyes. Ribbed fingertips. Open hearts.

But when I truly met myself in the moments of remembering ‘why’ I feel this way, I only had one way to show up..

turned on & alive.

Because..

The body remembers

That when I pay more attention to the moments of ‘turn on’ the moments remember me

Like muscle memory

Like committing to the promise you made to your future self

Like tuning in on your guitar

And tuning out of the questioning

The turn on, it stays

It stays in your cells and in your strength

So for as many moments as you can remember

And just as many as you will ultimately forget

Allow that ‘turn on’ to be held close in your heart

in the basin of your hips

At the curvature of your spine

And in the way you place your toes on the earth

And I promise that your breath will be taken away by the way the sun rises on the baby hairs of your face in the morning, and the way your head lands on the pillow tonight, when we open the doors and let you out into the fiery, ever-changing, ecstasy-exuding world of turn on.