I am reminded how I used to sit with all the characters I could stand to be: Adam to Zenophon, Gilgamesh to the futurists. I slink low in my chair under the remembered weight. I pushed dull blades into my chest, trying to get at that wizened pit. I wondered at my parents, teachers, friends, schools, churches and books, and could not grasp a blame. I used to crux myself, as man, within the planned arc of man. I am reminded, recently, of all that.
One river may pollute the ocean and one mill may pollute the river, but it is the need for a mill on a river, and the need for that need.
And now?
Well, I know that I am not a stone and not a tree. I am not really man. I am not the sea.
I am the nameless, speechless thing that peers out.
I cannot claim to matter, but also I am not an insignificant being.
I am reminded of a pain that now recedes.
I am sitting in a coffee shop, surveying people and things: the plank tables glued or joined, solid and well milled, fresh and clean. But none is impervious and each will warp and bow and split with time, and in my attempts at being, at words and naming things, those boards remind me of you and me. And also, of what we are not, of what we relate to but are intrinsic to.
Like trees, we reach and root to desires. We attach.
Like the sea, we precipitate in moody flows and seasoned tides and gravity.
Like other beings, we toss painfully and pleasurable at the beings we call 'me'.
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