Nearly three months now, marooned in this peculiar liminal zone—a hotel perched precariously on the borderline between New York and Pennsylvania, where winter has overstayed its welcome and the once-pristine snow now churns into gray, slushy regret. For fun, when the stir-craziness starts to simmer, we joyride in a Class C RV like fugitives from the Matrix, the keys left in the ignition by some cosmic glitch. It’s a beast of a vehicle, clumsy but oddly liberating, a vessel that can always be found in the neon purgatory of a Walmart parking lot, even during the whiteout chaos of a snowstorm.
The air here is thick with wet bark and nostalgia, a smell that curls into your chest like an uninvited memory. Time doesn’t behave normally in this place. It doesn’t march forward with purpose; instead, it loops and skips, an old record stuck in a groove. Days stretch like elastic, and nights settle in like an overbearing houseguest, all too comfortable in its stay.
My roommate in this oddball purgatory is a Gemini. Not a romantic entanglement—no, nothing like that. It’s more like sharing space with an older sister, one who knows just enough about you to make you uneasy but wields that knowledge with a strange, disarming grace. Or maybe she’s more like a wartime ally, someone you’ve huddled with in trenches, both of you ducking the same existential shrapnel. She’s a walking contradiction, her Gemini nature a kaleidoscope of sharp turns and blurred edges. One moment she’s pragmatic, the next, utterly undone by whimsy. She carries this duality as though it’s a flaming sword, something she’s mastered wielding while casually checking her reflection.
In her, I see a fragmented reflection of myself—a ghost of the person I used to be. Her every hypocritical pivot, every sudden emotional hairpin turn, feels like an echo from a younger version of me, back when my own chaos could fill rooms like smoke. But I don’t resent her for it. How could I? I’ve been that ghost. I’ve worn her contradictions like a second skin, and now, watching her navigate that same terrain, I feel an unexpected gratitude.
She’s a mirror the universe has handed me, and I’d be foolish to turn away. Instead of irritation, I offer her patience—the same patience I’ve painstakingly learned to offer myself. This snowy exile, this in-between space, is more than just a waystation. It’s a classroom. And if you’re paying attention, you’ll find that the lesson always comes back to love. Not the cloying, saccharine kind peddled in greeting cards, but love as an immutable force. The kind that simply is, without condition or expectation.
My heart buzzes with it, swelling with a kind of primal, unshakable bear love. It’s a love reserved for one in particular—a Panda who carries the master key to my chest. She’s the cornerstone of my metaphysical architecture, fittingly hailing from the Keystone State. There’s no getting around it: my soul is tangled with hers in a way that defies logic but feels as natural as breathing.
Still, a question nags at the edges of this quiet limbo: Will I find my way out of this snow-glazed chrysalis? This strange sanctuary has been safe, sure, but it was never meant to be permanent. Will I make it to White Lotus? Dragon is waiting there, ready to weave their Prayerformance into the fabric of my journey—a ritual I can feel pulling at me like the undertow of some unseen current.
For now, the hotel walls seem to hum with secrets, the floorboards creaking under the weight of unspoken possibilities. Outside, the snow falls with a muffled insistence, cloaking the world in deceptive quiet. I sit in the stillness, caught between movement and inertia, knowing that the thaw will come when it’s meant to. The journey will come. The road will thaw. And when it does, I’ll step out of this safe, in-between space —my Bear heart, full and fearless, ready to face whatever wild, wondrous thing waits ahead.
-Bearz