you are the universe in ecstatic motion

By Georgina Berbari

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I want to write about my lover in the most objective way I can. I know this exercise will reveal how pure and beautiful they are and… am I already being biased? I don’t think so because I believe everyone’s true nature is pure and beautiful, but we are born into this world and as time passes, we become sedimentary, some of us dusting ourselves off and transforming into something new, some of us getting lost in a wind storm.

Sediment is, by definition, a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion. Picture swirling sand, silt, and clay dancing in a dusty kaleidoscope born from the mouth of a river. Picture sediment so microscopically fine that it appears as if it were baking flour, carried by the wind and deposited in a lake turned milky blue. I often feel like I am this sedimentary dust, being carried this way and that, creating a dreamy fog—an enchantingly disorienting haze—and then gone.

But then, get this: Over millions of years, layers of sediment have built up and hardened into sedimentary rock. These new formations have been compacted tightly enough to no longer be affected by a breeze or a lap of the oceans tongue. They need not be moved if they do not want to be. They have learned the power of staying. My lover is a sedimentary rock and when winds and waves want him somewhere else he says no, I am OK right where I am. I think there must be something magnetic among the rich clay substance and glittering silt that makes him up because that’s what he does—he stays and knows who he is and then the breeze and waves come to him begging to learn about contentment.

There’s some sediment that looks like homemade seed and nut bread—lumpy and unevenly distributed, no two patterns the same. Delicious, but inconsistent. Other sediment is evenly sorted, with perfect layers reminiscent of tiny fish scales slicked clean and gleaming. These ones have probably been deposited by the ocean. That’s because the energy of this transporting medium is usually constant, resulting in balance and symmetry—nature’s way of flaunting its homeostatic beauty. My lover was deposited by the ocean. He is so gorgeous with layer upon layer of careful discernment and he has gone this way and that for a million years to become. Sometimes I feel like a baby compared to him, not even turned to rock yet. And that is part of why I love him: he embodies lessons it will take me a million years to learn.