Who We Are

 

The Division of Memory

 

It occurred to me… Perhaps everyone has a story to tell… And that the universe… Has been written into our hearts… Like chapters in a never-ending novella… Where page eighty… Becomes page one… Every time a character cries out in… disillusioned existential pain… if every person could be coerced… into a concise response… concerning their presence… on this spinning blue circle dancing… within the framework of a…. incomprehensibly massive… soap bubble… huh… A pure interpretation of life… Perhaps then… the answer would be found… from a billion lips… in thousands of languages… countless voices… even if it were… one… giant… scream… or… a soundless… smile…

 

 

The Past

 

Visiting again? How disappointing. I saw you stagger through the door, searching for old friends amid the ruins of a mirage you never quite understood. Nothing here but broken floorboard planks and the nervous rats scurrying underneath. That old neon sign was shut down long ago, bills never paid. A man in a suit came by and smashed it with a sledgehammer, saying something about brightness paying a price. You want to laugh and escape certain cold questions that have answers deplorable – and rhetorical – this life can sometimes be painful? Good people will often suffer? It burnt upon first consideration, soon replaced by numbness. You began projecting your life unto violent paradox, losing sight of your gifts and opportunities. Hey, this isn’t admonishment, hardly… We all make mistakes. Without them, nobody could learn. But there are no maps here. Yet you come back. You loved this bar. You entered with fake identification, pretending to be somebody else. You liked the intoxicated stranger who inevitably inhabited your body. Your troubled mind became a fading light, insanity embraced, realism replaced. I know; the lies start feeling safe. You can blame, you can objectify, you can idolize, you can falsify, you can patronize. You fancied yourself a libertine, travelling in circles, preaching about how people should never preach, sermonizing chaos. Your emotions have run wild. We all have a bridge to cross, toward a mysterious forest where ideas and perceptions are recalibrated. Those woods have been defined by myth and are shrouded in mist. We can look back instead of stepping forward. After all, it’s easier watching the movie, opposed to playing protagonist. You will remember the past. It can be helpful. But sorry, you can’t live here — Especially without company. I can’t kick you out. But there’s the door. Just past where the goddess used to wait for her prince.

 

The Present

 

You are sitting on a bench facing a beach pondering the current present flow of reality; the past has evaporated into a figment of your imagination. Look straight ahead, gaze at that water, the essential enigma of which we are nearly entirely comprised, sunshine dancing off easy dance waves. The possibilities are infinite yet somehow constrained by an overriding sense of vague destiny amidst chaos created by free will — which without — life would be machinelike and meaningless. And yet… somehow, without feeling that small semblance fate, liberation itself would seem a prison, because some valuable necessities must be predetermined or at least guaranteed on a celestial contract written in stardust by elegant ink bequeathed from the daily pumping veins of an initial thought so outlandishly impossible that it could exist, defying a logical darkness with irrational love. Ah, yes, from the arteries of that unavoidable consequence do our holy emotions pour. Thinking like this is scary. Like the beginning’s sighing over your shoulder, disappointed another one was unable to explain. Relax. Nothingness never existed, because someone was always keeping track. It’s all in your head… while the water flows over the rocks and washes away the imprint of yesterday. Breathe, smile, we have a good view.