[tw: suicidal ideation]

I’m renting a home. With a backyard. There’s a tangerine tree in the backyard.

I had absolutely no part in the upbringing and caretaking of this tangerine tree in my backyard up until last June, but wow — to witness a being in bounty has been a breathtaking and humbling experience. 

In ceremony this fall, I experienced all of the deep love and pleasure my body is capable of holding. Have you ever sat for five hours straight just feeling your body’s capacity for love and pleasure? Swimming in and out of other realms and dimensions of experiences (it is ceremony, after all) but coming back to the anchoring point, the surprisingly felt fact that: my body, after all she’s been through, is so goddamn capable of holding big oceans of pleasure. Wide canyons of love. Playful and wonderful waterfalls of bliss. 

“You’ve spent so much time healing in pain. Now it’s time to learn what healing in love can feel like,” the shaman told me before ceremony.

It was overwhelming. And yet, something I feel completely capable of, to come back to the felt presence of love within me. Not directed towards something outside of me, as we humans are so keen to share the love we feel (very cute, actually). 

The entire night was a moment to practice. To practice coming back to this warmth, when I strayed. To allow my body, my being, to exist as a vessel for light flowing and coursing through me. 

When I see the pregnant tree in my backyard, I can’t help but wonder if she feels the same way. Is she feeling orange aliveness running through her? Is she feeling abundant, full bloom, her sensuality extending to her extremities? Is she feeling the peace that I’m experiencing as I tend to her abundance, snip by snip, grateful with each fruit that graces my hands?

It has been such a humbling experience to have bounty in my backyard and feel responsible for the distribution of it. Every friend I’ve seen this past month has been a divine recipient of tangerines in plastic grocery bags. Ten tangerines, twenty, thirty to the point where they chuckle uncomfortably, “oh wow, no no that’s plenty,” attempting to hand some back to me. I refuse the return. I am urging in orange. I am eating orange, blending orange, infusing orange, loving orange, chopping orange, tasting orange, overwhelmed in orange. The last thing I can imagine myself to do with a tangerine (other than baking a bread; I haven’t yet ventured into my baking era) is masturbate with the full fruit but that feels a bit crude to bring into this space (the Madonna-whore complex, I find myself within its grip when it comes to my writing). 

I fell in love with orange the summer of 2017, my last summer in Seattle, when the eclipses were on the Leo/Aquarius axis and I was head underwater into my first queer love. Bellyflopping into the unknown. That was the first time I fell in love with orange – when I realized how far my love could reach, how deep loving someone could go. How another person could open a portal of something(someone) new within you that you never could have gotten to solo. A door you never noticed; a key you didn’t own. How expansive pleasure could feel. How colors could take on more vibrancy; how a walk with a lover could form a whirlpool between you and them, as the surrounding world both ceased to exist and was magnified in the infinity mirror of your joined gazes. It was love like acid. It was like falling in love for the first time all over again. 

For those who also have had the pleasure of having two first loves (bisexuals unite), we also hold the pain of having two first loves. How a heartbreak, when you’re 23 years old, could send you right back kicking and screaming to the baby girl within. 

Again, I’m reminded of how much pain and pleasure, love and grief, my body has held. And how my body can expand to hold more.

I’m 29 now, coming to a sense of completion that I could barely only begin to fathom at 23. I’m 29 now, seeing the closing chapter of a decade behind me. I’m 29 now, staring down the arroyo of the next unwritten chapter. I’m 29 now, a godsend, a blessing to live this far. I thought I would die before I hit my 30s because I could never fathom a life beyond youth. 

I’m 29 now, and learning to steward a tangerine tree in my borrowed backyard. 

Who knows what kind of seeds I’ll plant into my thirties. Who knows what kind of love I’ll feel, or trees I’ll tend to, or colors I’ll submerge myself in. But if it feels anything like the peace I’ve found in tending to my inner and outer garden, then I think I’ll stay. I’m looking around, seeing the fruits and failures, and looking within, seeing the rich landscape I’ve cultivated over three decades time.

All I want: to feel the peace I’ve found tending to this tangerine tree, and sharing the fruits of her labor. All I want: to keep welcoming pleasure, to keep allowing my body to expand and soften into her own extremities. All I want: to keep learning through love, to keep repositioning myself to receive the rich waterfall of warmth and light that pulses through all living beings.

And maybe most of all, I want the aliveness I’ve found deep diving into orange and witnessing the bounty of a tree doing what she’s here to do – explode orange. Once a year, like clockwork, explode orange. 

Gracias, te amo,

Victoria

1. Mary Oliver, Wild Geese. They say you have a soulmate poem, and this is one of mine (and many, many other peoples. It’s nice to share In-Yun with others<3)

2. I watched Past Lives and absolutely sobbed my way through it. To anyone else who has watched it: if you’re willing to have a rapid fire text convo, please – I think my soul needs that. Let’s discuss together.

3. This song <3