A new start, fresh page. Call of a bird I can’t name, but I know its voice. Sunlight spilling over the house, casting shadow over the park, which will soon be ripped apart and built anew. Can’t wait for the saws, for the trucks. But it will be pretty when it’s done, if a bit more artificial. Nicole Kidman in trees, grass, and asphalt.
I couldn’t sleep last night. A tightness in my chest I can’t explain, a gibbering mind portending, projecting. Writing that paragraph above loosened its grip: a piece of data I should not overlook, and likely will.
Can I write good? Is this impressive? Expressive? Do you think I’m good/pretty/talented/smart/relevant/significant? Tell me I am, ideally with conviction. Enter this arena and emerge victorious so that I may walk out with you, hand in hand. I don’t think I can make peace with my Destroyer, and I tire of the effort.
I imagine I am not alone in this, and I am advised to take comfort in the collective suffering, find kinship there. I’d rather find a friend in joy than in pain, but I guess I should learn to take what I can get.
This is not a story, at least not in the traditional sense. Should you wish to walk the path alongside me, please know that I do not know where it leads. I only know that we both will be gone long before we reach its end. My greatest fear is finding that the path is but a loop, a cycle, ultimately leading nowhere. A circuit that provides little comfort as our current flows through it, only a cultivated familiarity with time and space.
I sometimes wish that I could donate my being back to the universe, recycle it. “One man’s trash…” you know.
Imagine we might walk our minds like we walk our dogs, and when we meet, we let them clash and smell and bark and play. All the while, we stand and awkwardly comment on their behavior. Apologize, excuse. Do they enjoy it? Do they find comfort in each other? Will they resort to violence in response to some threat imperceptible to us? Will they raise their voices in chorus when the coyote comes creeping in the night? Will we pick up their shit, or let it lie in waiting for some unfortunate footfall?
I like to imagine us capable of standing together, liberated from fear, supportive of one another. Not for some goal, not towards some illusion of progress, but simply for its own sake. The world is beautiful when seen with clarity, when unfiltered. Yet we dress it up as we see fit, make enhancements that seem to reduce more so than elevate. The park, again. “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Look on my works, and find me. May I be so fortunate that you find peace there, as well. If peace is the path we choose to trace out, knotted and repeating, without beginning nor end, might we finally make peace with ourselves? With each other? With the fear the universe placed in us for some misguided sense of self-preservation? Or will we grow weary of the walking, bored with the repetition and routine, and stray from the path simply for want of trails untrodden?
Be quiet, my child. Submit to the yoke and find comfort in rolling the rock you’ve been charged with. Should you stop, it will crush you. These are the terms, the social contract. They seized your hand and forced your mark to be made before you were more than a loose concept.
Albert wants me to love the rock, to embrace the will of sadistic and uncaring gods whose punishment may yet be transformed into a labor of defiance. That noble struggle. I’d rather step aside and let its weight carry it back to the depths of the underworld that spawned it. Watch as it rolls, and smile. But the body hungers, it thirsts, and sitting cannot sustain it for long.
May this be my service, my gift of reciprocation to the universe. I do not know what else to offer. If I believe it is enough, will it be so?
In the end, I guess I’m not looking for answers, but questions that feel worth the asking.