Endless Train

If it is not enough to remove the mental blocks standing in the way between you and that infinite it-ness then you have to go out looking for it. Incomputable, it is something in the essence, the in between of being and being alive. The short circuited shoulder of comfort  through art. There may not be anything inherently meaningful about a crushed pop can in a frame but there is still everything it can mean, under the right light.  It’s either in you or it’s not, to see that thing alive, to see it as a representation of deeper commentaries that push their way through the pit of your soul asking for expression. There may not be meaning in the thing itself, but art can speak, through artist and witness.

But does art really save, or does it merely isolate further? Does belief in the abstract give us enough to live our lives by or does it tear away the flesh from the bone, isolating us from humanity by way of partitioning it into segments of those for and those against? After all if you are trying to express something universal, some touchstone at the center of it all, do you not need the mind and eyes of all? Not just the ones who have the tools to see the multiple layers in the fabric you have created? If it becomes easy to write the world off, in yet you crave to carve in expression of it, then what exactly are you expressing?

Once again it seems we are faced with a choice, either you are going to do something or you’re not and if you already know the answer than there is nothing left to debate. Get on the train and ride it out of the station and damn the consequences, because they are just the consequences of the inevitable, of the choice you have already made before you took it up in guilt and conscience to be examined as some navigable doctrine. Most choices are already made, either by heart or head or belief. 

To get out and see the world was a choice completed in the silence of the first car ride I can remember. Feet up, head down I watched the crayons melt in the back window and the scenery go rushing past me; mountains and tall pines, blue waters of fresh lakes and the exhilarating wiz of other vehicles on their way to countless destinations. It was the first time I was made more complete in my first-hand knowledge of other things and had the realization that I had the misconception to think that all rocks were black. In fact they can be a myriad of colors, coral rose with flecks of sparking diamond white, limestone paste with blue azure checks. They can be flat or rolling, but more importantly they could exist outside of what I knew. It was the first time I saw things change in the passing weight of time and distance. Life can change this way, in the particulate of window sunshine, in the absorption of differentness, and in knowledge of how things are outside of one’s self. 

It was the first time I was gifted the calm passing reverie for change and solitude. My placid adolescent gaze was set afire with possibility, the possibility to see all the change I could and be enriched by it. The choice was made, in that moment in the back-seat, whether I knew it or not, it was made in the flickering light of a noon-day sun that I have been chasing that ever since. 

And now as my eyes waver and close over these stretching desert-like plains I know I have found it again, this strange yet familiar place where thinking is merely a matter of inhaling and exhaling and not conscious decisions. It isn’t 1.2” margins or APA citations or a reading list of irrelevant books. It is the things you pick up in breathing and sight. It is the size and distribution of volcanic ash over unfamiliar land masses, it’s knowing things, not academically, but internally, as one knows the feeling of lifting their own arms, or tasting their favorite food. It is knowledge of life and self through the direct experience of it, eating it up in chunks. Knowing that rocks can be pink or blue or purple not by photograph or imagination but in the rough cracked surface of those colors as you pass your hand along them. This place is strange, the language and customs stranger, but I roll on seeking out new nights and new days, not because it assuages loneliness or longing or home-sickness. Not because it makes you necessarily happy or comfortable, but because it speaks of being apart of something larger through the experience of it. And the decision to seek that particular sensation out, was made long before I could have a memory of it. It is the inherent predisposition of being human, to be on the train you can’t get off.

Continuing On

I have life beyond life. I have power beyond power. I have lived and breathed and died a million times more than I could ever write. I have existed with passion and without, through emptiness without thought of loneliness because I spoke fire, breathed soot and tasted the decay of my most precious metal -  my dreams. My thoughts my ideologies, my ambitions, they sputter forward like little ducks, following forth behind an untraceable, unimaginable goose. My mother hen, the subtly and essence of consciousness. The why, the agency, the qui and the quoi. 

Why I love is not the same as who I love. Who is just a passing metaphor, a glimpse at possibility, the what is the deciding factor, an aggregate sum of fate and inevitability. Why I am alive is not a question but an answer to the darkest questions I have ever feared to ask.  To live as an open gate, is to swing forth in the breeze and answer the call of all those winds that pass forth amongst the trees. To be human in the wind, to remain alive in the swaying factoids that push and pull you width wise and side wise, is to hold desperately to the rushing necessity that stems from cradling unborn dreams.  A dead weight is the eye that rests on its still born child. A mannequin of all possibilities. I shake and move and recreate the motions in an effort to spit forth this melonous weight, this heaviness in my belly that begs for life. It demands the sacrifices of a million fires. The heads of a thousand toads and the lonely empty stretching plane of that desolate highway towards selfhood. It’s not about staring into the abyss, it’s about eating the abyss of existential hopelessness for breakfast and asking for seconds. Seconds, seconds, seconds. Fuck you. I’m coming for more. And this time I’ll swallow you whole, because this time I know the score. No need to be an assimilated dot amongst the mist, to understand the process of evaporation. This time I stand as the mountain and let the water rain down. I let the pieces of the ripe tide pass my impenetrable surface and spit them forth a waterfall in the spectrum of light.

24 Hours in Rome

It glows.

In the setting sun I move amongst architecture and ground hallowed and historic. I am full of the basic necessities of life after eating my fresh grilled panini and cold beer overlooking the Colosseum. The streets here are cobbled and cluttered with the sounds of  impatient drivers and scurrying pedestrians. I remove my shoes to feel the shadows cast my feet onto these ancient rocks. In a glance Rome is the smell of dust and tomatoes, bugs, cars, buses, tourists with sore feet, blankets laid over in trinkets and souvenirs, costumed Roman Gladiators and the upside down triangle of fingers brandished in constant emphasis.  The past, the present, the old the new, things that are built for now and things that are built for all time, they grow and decay in a garden of din and beauty, wavering with the horizon, buzzing under the pressure. This, as all things, victims of the same fatal disease tearing the holes through these ruins.

Just ten hours ago I was home. Now, on my own again my eyes are open and the heart leads on, past eroding edifices and into winding unlit passages that spin me face first into this living history book. I'm back. One with my intuition. Making proper turns without a map, stumbling into everything I need to see. I can be so many things out here, covered in the tapestries of these historic worlds. I can feel tradition pass through the walls that are falling down around me; it stretches and grows the skin covering the insatiable girl residing within it. And through my placid gaze I realize how much better that skin feels now in the triumph of all these memories, under that warm ichor sun that is falling slowly, this July evening in Rome.

It isn't lost on me now, how fortunate I am to be here. To live life filled with adventure and reward. To know that the world is a place made infinitely smaller and simpler through the experience of it. At every turn we can wake up to the joy that is the inevitability of this; we are given what we need, if we allow ourselves to be shown just what that is. To live, to breath, to see, to exist in all our imperfection, surrounded by the intangible, is the essence of living that which is greater than ourselves.

Before I went home I pined and longed for the sound of poplar trees. Longed for the fulfilled promise that we could swim this flood of newness and isolation for that familiar harbor. But what was missed drifting for that ephemeral shore was that home was always apart of the rising seas around us.  We carry a piece of all the souls who crash into us in that particular way that causes us to call them friends, lovers, and family. Their blessings are in the breeze and finally, finally, I can feel it here. The pride and thanksgiving accrued in 24 years. For me continuing on, being alive in this way, chasing these ideas around the world is more than given in any embrace. To show up again to challenge old trauma and all preconceptions. To deliver on our potential. That is the connecting solidarity between me, the ones I love, and the experiences I long for. I see more. I do more. I live more, for all of us. Because the world needs it. Because we need it;

to be lifted up,

in expectation, 

purpose,

and joy.