I was told that humans can expand their lungs 60% in capacity when they breathe. That full breath—as large as the universe—rains a counterintuitive calm through the spine and nervous system. I’ve had to rebuild my lung capacity, breathing into a spirometer to track my progress. In those early days I could only lift the blue plastic ball in the tube the height of a fly, then the height of a matchbook, before weeks passed and I could breathe the universe again.
There have been times when moments felt beyond vast, as if as large as life. In these times, I could feel my DNA, the building blocks of me, held in the body’s of my parents and their parents and so on, all the way back to before homo sapiens, then before mammals, then to that first creature to breathe on this planet impossibly destined to create me. In these moments where I felt so magnificently small and part of something so vast, I could feel my body extend thousands of millions of years into the future as particles and ideas and interactions sent on their course of collisions to who knows where. I could act on plans years and decades away as though they sat at my feet. I could act, not with certainty, but hope.
More often, now, there are moments so small, just a smile on my face and a breeze in the air. A moment of just hearing the gentle stream of water hit the sides of the tea kettle. Listening for the boil. Smelling the aromas of cardamom and cloves and cinnamon lift in the air. All sounds, smells, and glittering light passing as soon as they appear. More often I need these fleeting moments. I need to focus on the next thing in front of me without becoming overwhelmed with the many paths one decision can take me. I know this slowing down and focusing has been what I’ve needed, but the inability to hold the broader moment scares me and later fills me with the most regrets. But I never regret a moment of simply stopping to enjoy.
What I love about moments is the ambiguity of the amount of time they hold, like the length of a string or the air in a vessel. Moments, no matter how ephemeral or vast, seem best when perceived widely and openly.
Awoken
The time to sing dawns.
Wren, robin, finch and jay rouse
sleepy Helios
with beaks and lyres blazing,
plucking notes from dusky streams.
—Kat Dornian, 2025
Kat Dornian 