I marvel at the way elderly couples can walk together with such delicateness that it’s like they’re holding the fate of the world in their hands, even though they know their connection is about to end.
I marvel at the tiny salty thunderstorm of miso in my cup.
I marvel at how birds can fly but we’ve somehow never worshipped them as gods.
I marvel at the sensation of wind buffeting my body as I hang out the clothes, a whirling twirling invisible force cheekily caressing my material form like an ancient eternal lover lifting up my skirt.
I marvel that strangers on the internet are interested in the thoughts in my head, and that I’ve still got things to say after all this time.
I marvel at how goddamn good a shower feels and the fact that I’m allowed to have one whenever I like.
I marvel at how big and old the universe is and how we don’t really know anything about anything but we hardly ever talk about it.
I marvel at the wide-eyed openness of infants and the closely guarded secret every grownup holds about their lifelong struggle to get back there.
I marvel at how we all roar past each other in giant metal speed machines every single day, and it somehow flows with such miraculous smoothness and consistency that we’re always surprised to see anything go wrong with it.
I marvel at quiet housewives and the secrets they’ll never tell.
I marvel at how great tragedies always cut through the muck of cultural and technological alienation and people rush through danger to help perfect strangers as though they are beloved family members.
I marvel at how beautiful young people are and how adept the mind is at hiding that fact from them.
I marvel at how sometimes the intimacy of a private message conversation with a stranger on the other side of the world can surpass that of any face-to-face conversation. Sometimes you hit on a connection so deep that you get the sense that you’re not just speaking to another human but communing energetically with their unblanketed soul. And I marvel that these connections have only just started happening in a mainstream way in the last decade or so, and I wonder what that can mean for us as a species.
I marvel at the tenderness and protectiveness of young men towards old women.
I marvel at how we’re all fleshy, fingery, toothy ape monsters that consume the life force of other organisms with our mouths and excrete them out our anuses, but we still look at some specific humans like they’re weirdos.
I marvel at the way people can talk themselves out of doing what they really want and the sneaky, roundabout way they always end up doing what they want anyway.
I marvel at people who build entire lifestyles around making sure they get to have a few hours a week to spend floating in the ocean and waiting for a wave, just so they can have the occasional experience of riding on a force of nature while standing on two feet.
I marvel at the outcasts and shut-ins who’ve ceased trying to pretend that our society is anything other than bat shit crazy nonsense.
I marvel at the softness of my pillow and how sleep is so healing in such a gentle way that it feels like it must be illegal.
I marvel at the lovely rainbows and tiny crackling of the soap bubbles when I’m doing the dishes.
I marvel at how the power of babbling thought stories is so tenuous that spending an hour outside with a single tree can cause them to fall crumbling away.
I marvel at cake. What dark magic is that? It goes in the oven a sloppy mess and comes out as a puff of intoxicating decadence.
I marvel at the instincts of dogs and children at detecting malevolence.
I marvel at the sound of rain on my roof and how you can zone in and listen to each individual drop or zoom out and listen to the whole symphony.
I marvel at the friendly face of the moon and how she dances perfectly with my monthly cycle.
I marvel at the subtle winking behind the confident-sounding bloviations of pundits and know-it-alls from that deep, primordial place within them which knows it’s total play-acting.
I marvel at how good sand feels to my feet; a free massage from the sea-chewed bones of ancient sea life and prehistoric lava ejaculations.
I marvel at the sweet patience of mothers as they listen and respond to every tiny thought that tumbles out of their toddler’s mouth, no matter how repetitive or purposeless.
I marvel that owls and whales and hummingbirds and giant squids are a thing. They seem like made-up science fiction creatures.
I marvel at the way science tells us that our world is an inseparable swirling sea of microscopic particles and energy, yet we can spend all day thinking about what a bitch our coworker Stephanie is.
I marvel at how self-destructive people can be when they’re scared and how our little tender fears are used to manipulate us, and how really the only thing standing between us and health is a little bit of bravery; just enough courage to step towards the things we are scared of, whether they be homelessness, disappointment, heartache, loneliness, abandonment, or betrayal.
I marvel at how we have pet animals moving around our houses and act like it’s not weird. “I thought I’d bring a small furry mammal into this building to wander around from room to room for a few years.”
I marvel at how, despite all the psychological brutalizing of the social engineers, if you stand a thousand people in a field and play beautiful music, every identity barrier melts away.
I marvel at our ability to stay calm and mature instead of constantly screaming “Holy shit! We’re in space and death happens and I don’t really know what anything is!”
I marvel at how people let doctors knock them unconscious and inflict precise acts of calculated violence upon their bodies with very sharp blades, and how it usually works and makes them healthier.
I marvel at the experience of drinking from a glass of water, chugging huge mouthfuls of this weird flavorless liquified ancient volcano vapor that is welcomed with excitement by every part of my body and being.
I marvel at cloth. How the hell did we come up with that? I’m sitting here in a t-shirt that took thousands of years of technological collaboration to make and I still don’t even understand how a sewing machine works.
I marvel at how adept the mind is at claiming achievements and ideas for the glory of one tiny little thinker-brain when with even a tincture of humility, anyone can see that no idea or innovation is ever created in isolation.
I marvel at how we can control our blinking and our breath whenever we want, yet it’s possible to go all day without noticing either.
I marvel at the way our flesh is wrapped around these hard calcium structures like a tomato plant tied to a stick.
I marvel at how some flowers from the sidewalk in a jar of water can change a whole room.
I marvel at how life finds a way through the cracks in the concrete and the fissures of our worried minds.
I marvel at the fact that there are giant-brained singing leviathans swimming in our planet’s oceans whose mental lives we know nothing about, and the fact that we’re killing them all while looking to the stars for signs of alien life.
I marvel that I’m told I’ve been on this planet for 44 years and yet it still kind of feels like I just got here.
I marvel at how every single person I meet contains a whole universe inside them that is as rich and as complex as the one inside me.
I marvel at how we can be sitting in a whole bus full of human-shaped universes and not be brought to our knees, tears streaming from our face, wonder howling from our being, with the thunderous overwhelming mind-blowing magnificence of that very fact.
I marvel at the fact my body can make humans and the humans it makes turn out to be bloody amazing and way beyond my wildest expectations of how beautiful humans can be.
I marvel at how powerful love is and how when two people sincerely decide to fully love, understand, and champion each other then the whole they create is truly greater than the sum of their parts.
I marvel at the freedom of being seen, finally, after all these years of trying to hide.
I marvel at the healing power of receiving pleasure.
I marvel at the power of having my shameful wounds tended to by the hands of someone who is devoted to loving all of me.
I marvel at how two people turned to face one another at the same frequency can create a deep and abiding peace, like how two speakers emitting a tone of the exact same frequency will cancel each other out when turned to face towards each other.
I marvel at a human’s capacity for falling in love with a bird, a tree, a song, this moment, and I wonder if we were brave enough to fall in love with each other in every moment without falling immediately into the old patterns of possessiveness and manipulation, whether that would be enough to change everything.
I marvel at this wild and crazy ride.
I marvel that it’s still going and might still go on for a long time.
I marvel at you.
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Thanks for reading! My articles and poems are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish.
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30 responses to “I Marvel”
Was this not the greatest poem? I ever had the opportunity to read twice, and then again, over and over again, this is the best work you have ever put out, it will never be lost in the sands of time. For, I, for one, will read it over and over again, Just a Marvel to make here and share with us, your faithful followers, Thank You for sharing those thoughts with us…..
Tears of joy… this gift was a profound moment in a journey to witness it…. i love you… ✌
Thank you for another beautiful pice, Caitlin!
je m’emerveille du merveilleux de ce texte. bon début pour commencer la journée.
Ms. C. Is there a way I can print this poem? I would like to share it and try to memorize it. My lady finally read it and marvel of marvels, she loved it. That is saying something. She even read Rogue Nation, the times, they are a’changing……
Sure! I would recommend copying the text into a word document before printing to save paper and ink.
Thanks for the follow up! I am so new at this and have so much to learn. Mr. Bircumshaw, one of your followers was kind enough to send me a word attachment so I have my printed copy! It is really nice how helpful the folks here are…..
I marvel at my feet that carry this beautiful body that was gifted to me by Source.
I marvel at my eyes to see my baby when he entered the world for his first breath.
I marvel at the awareness that brings my breath to me, from the moment I wake from sleep.
grateful, filled with gratitude from the first breath, to the last.
Blessings dear One for sharing these with the world
Caitlin,
I marvel at this effects the world and others can produce on us, by touch, words, sounds, and sometimes only by presence.
I marvel at the utopists, at human possibilities and fails in achieve what we could do.
I marvel at religious oportunities of contemplation, like this poetry, specialy when causualy occurs, free of institucional submission and constrains.
I marvel with mundane and transcendent things. And I marvel when I perceive (even knowing about the quantic entanglement) that I’m not alone in this jorney.
Thanks for sharing this part of… you!
This was as wonderful response to your poem, this person took out the time to recognize the words you were saying, OH! I am missing the Latest News here, my soul is deflated, the latest falling of the bombs, the innocent civilians killed, the Lies Printed about that incidence, the corporate media at work…..I do not read any of that shit, I just sit here at home and play the drums, that good Money bought for me, fairly earned, and fairly spent……I donate faithfully to my local Food Pantry, so that, if I can help it, no brother or sister of mine, will go to bed hungry…..
What a beautiful piece of WORD MUSIC. I have memorized a few poems I liked and I would like to memorize this one for sure, that way I could share it everywhere! Thank you and your beautiful family, you make my heart sing…..Never desert us……
Thank you Caitlin for making my morning coffee MARVELous. Your words, passion, humanity, and vulnerability are so refreshing. I read you for politics and world issues, but love you for being you!
Will share this column with the people in my life who are special to me. And maybe in the future with someone far away via a PM. Love truly is everywhere.
I marvel at you Caitlin. I marvel that you have become so wise in a mere 44 years. I marvel that the Divine Spirit That is Universal Unconditional Love led me to your healing emanations, just when I was faltering in the face of the Dark Side. I marvel that you so freely show me the key to finding the marvelous in all things.
Fabulous writing, Caitlin. Something very Oz about your work. It evokes the years I spent in Sydney.
sadhu sadhu sadhu
I marvel that anyone could produce such a volume of words and manage to always coax them into making good sense.
You are amazing.
Mindfulness
What a great teacher Caitlin
I marvel at your beautiful, intelligent, inspiring mind and free spirit that could produce something so beautiful and inspiring for me to read and take in. Thank you!
Quote, ” I marvel at the way elderly couples can walk together with such delicateness that it’s like they’re holding the fate of the world in their hands,” Unquote.
For an Old Fart myself, I must point out to you, elderly folks do not “walk together with such delicateness because they’re holding the fate of the World in their hands”, they walk that way because everything in our bodies HURT.
Bugger the fate of the World, we did our bit, and now it’s the turn of the younger folk to do their bit, whilst us oldies nurse our aches and pains.
Beautiful … and thank you.
I marvel that another human being can express all those things that I marvel at also!
Lovely. This brought tears to my eyes.
Beautiful….I think I need a cigarette…
I marvel at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrBdYmStZJ4
and how it just keeps going and going, no matter how fatally flawed and horribly unjust it is for the vast majority of human beings.
Truth is a marvel ! Thank you and others. Keep On…
Very Nice! Thanks
“I marvel at how beautiful young people are and how adept the mind is at hiding that fact from them.” Thank you for your beautiful and truthful heart, many in my travels put the youth of today, down, when in fact what we need is to LIFT THEM UP, for these young souls are the future for tomorrow, my future, your future, what kind of world will lay ahead for us if we don’t attend to the needs and lift these beautiful people up? They are our future, if we want to look forward to future at all!
“I marvel at how sometimes the intimacy of a private message conversation with a stranger on the other side of the world can surpass that of any face-to-face conversation. Sometimes you hit on a connection so deep that you get the sense that you’re not just speaking to another human but communing energetically with their unblanketed soul. And I marvel that these connections have only just started happening in a mainstream way in the last decade or so, and I wonder what that can mean for us as a species.”
It is the Holy spirt of God, that joins and binds together those that follow and answer to their sub-consious prompts, in the uniting of God and mankind through LOVE, peace, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self control. It is the Holy spirit that binds family, community and nations together, for the benifit of all, it is self sacrificing, all loving, and helping, not for greed, but for the love of one another, and to live in harmony with God through his wisdom, shared by his living word!
Thank you for this beautiful poem that came from the heart!
>>I marvel at you.
And we absolutely marvel at you and the feelings you awaken in us.
I’ll be marveling for a time over that most marvelous piece of prose dear 🙂
Amen, young cousin. And meant to tell you a posting or two ago, nothing is everything.