Sunday, January 11, 2009

Maybe there's something fundamentally honest about feeling tiny.

When you don’t know who you are, you make something up.

You wake up, or rather you stop trying to sleep.

A promise left behind does not exactly disappear, but perhaps rusts to nothing or is buried in the sand. The things we leave behind.

One year, you are perfectly comfortable in a crowd, on a train, swimming in the ocean, walking under an open sky. One scar later, everything about crowds, trains, oceans, or skies is forever changed.

Any amount of time can pass, and really the stars don’t change that much, and nothing else changes that much, except maybe what you hold on to between A and B, between B and C, and so on forever.

One morning you wake up, the air is cool, your vision is crisp, and you can see without a filter. What a morning that is.

You know that feeling, when you really “get” a work of art, or the stars in the sky or the clouds just overwhelm you, or you sense the depth of another person, or a massive number floors you? I always feel tiny. Maybe there’s something fundamentally honest about feeling tiny.

Stay with me, but listen: we are less than a little breeze can blow. Of course nothing lasts forever. But nothing even lasts for very long. Have you ever gone somewhere, done something, known someone, specifically because it would blow away, because it was better that way?

I'm going to jump so high. I was meant for big empty spaces. Have you ever felt so constrained in a space, like you filled more space than you were being given?

We are invisible voices, you and me. Imagine us. Have you ever spoken with someone, known someone, for a long time, only to discover it was mostly imaginary?

I have bitten at smoke I wanted it so badly. Have you ever wanted something so badly you have chomped at the air for it?

If we speak quietly enough I just know we will hear each other. Have you ever wondered if someone can still hear you, behind the words that drown it all out?

I suppose you cannot get very far if you stay connected to the ground. Jumping helps, but only a little.

Some cross bridges. Some jump. Some stand terrified in the middle, and wait for it to collapse.

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