I remember as a kid saying once that I was going to run away, and I didn't look back.
I was gone a day before my parents realized that I was serious and went out to look for me.
A few years later while in Turkey I was upset at my father, and so, even in the midst of an earthquake, I walked away from him. I hid in a corner and watched people hold one another in their arms as they ran past, not noticing me. I stood static with knees locked, and heart pounding heavier and heavier, sinking my knees even further into position and I couldn't decide
(I COULDN'T DECIDE)
if I wanted my father to come save me from my solidarity among the chaos.
In those moments, the falling buildings from all around us weren't as loud as my own heart.
The people's mouths gaped, filling with tears, but they were mute; everything was mute.
My tears tasted salty, but not as salty as the mediterranean that stung my eyes only weeks before; at that point the stinging in my eyes was replaced by something more.
When my father found me, it was clear in his face that the wreckage that was all around us wasn't comparable to the wreckage we make of one another.
Does the earth that shatters around us/stings us/ shakes us/ bites us/ harms us provide a mirror image of the potential wreckage in any relationship? Do the sunny days remind us of the rewards?
In love (and in in anything really)
the reward has to be worth the pain.
Both the reward and the pain have to be known before the endeavor
because there is no finish line, and
because pain and joy are what pull our eyelids down like curtains
to prevent the stinging in our eyes from the sun
along with a slow unveiling of light onto form,
the form ultimately being the wheel on which we incessantly run,
arms laden with loved ones and mouths filling up with salty water
as we watch the water levels rise and homey structures crumble.
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I have come to no conclusion
in these minutes of seclusion.
If what we see is just illusion
let's leave nothing for exclusion.
====
To tear this down I must be blind,
dig nails deep, and pull the rind.
The fleshy artifact left behind
is something made for me to find.
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But can an answer come without time?
A little digging? A stupid rhyme?
I'd act this out, as if a mime
but the less you know, the more sublime.
So bright; I can't.
Again, just a little.
I have a nose, and I can see it through my fuzzy lenses.
Still too bright.
Close completely.....
Now, open. Open wide, just once more.
Here I am: on a stump.
Legs in front, and the rest follows.
My writing quickens to keep up with the pace of an approaching storm; I can feel it coming,
as if by my biological clock,
as if it were only for me.
You blinked, and now it's dark. But if you close them again, and maybe you won't notice the approaching storm.
... It's not working.
No? I thought eyes were sensors for anything... but I suppose even a blind man would know if the rain were coming.
You don't need eyes to see the stampede of a storm.. In fact, if I were blind I would feel the tension more. The booms would erupt in my ears and lead me to something more than home, because home would be nothing but pitch-blackness that I fill with imagination. The sounds would paint pictures in my mind with whatever I believed color and images to be. The wind would be my only competitor, running right behind me, putting on the pressure just before passing. The rain would both pull me down and refresh me, mesh with me, becoming my tears and my sweat. I wouldn't know my own body aside from the tingling from all around me; and I'd have to imagine myself in the world as the negative shape my surroundings create. I'd have to imagine myself to be everything that nature wasn't, or else become everything that it was.
Open or not, it's about to pour.
