You know, some people believe that as humans, we are not subjective to change. Some believe inexorably that we are who we are no matter what, even when we try to hide it. I've never stopped to wonder what would possess any human to think this way, until today. There's a supple feeling I can hardly explain to another soul. It's a settlement of emotion I only feel when someone or more commonly something is connecting with my soul. Have you ever felt that? Has some thing or being you may not be able to define ever taken a slow motion moment with you, stopping to whisper to your spirit and meet eyes with you quite fully for a moment? And you feel excited, but breatheless all at once? And you feel guilty for denying it a moment before and inextricably blissful for its fleeting presence now staring you down face to face? In that moment I like to envision pale, porcelain hands holding the hills of my cheeks inside them as if to think if they let go, my face would crumble to the floor in beautiful battered pieces for someone to mop up. I imagine those gentle hands knowing everything detail about my spirit with just one touch, their eyes seeing everything I cannot within myself, understanding what nothing or no other can and by that thought I am excited and perplexed. There is so much fear but more powerful is the excitement inside me in such a delighted moment. I can't always explain in words why I somehow live for all my meetings with this Stranger, for surely he is no one I've ever met before so I shall call him my Stranger so you know to whom I am referring to, but I do know that I love him and all his mystery. After all, what is life without a hover of mystery? I once heard in a song an intelligence I'll never be able to forget. The intelligence was this,
"We're not afraid of who we are but of what we have become."
Think about it. We cannot change who we are, but we decide what we can become. Too often we catch ourselves tangled in the web of our own design that inevitably seems to strangle all we thought to be true, when the answer lies in our decisions--not adaptations. We aren't meant to adapt or rebel or strive to change who we are as humans, but rather tame or unleash the beasts inside us, the ones that stalk our Strangers and prey upon their innocence. Once we realize we hold the chain against our demons, we will understand we have the power to set them free or leave them be. They try to tell us what we are and what we should be and what we should talk and dress and be like. Don't you understand what they are telling you? They say you are the shadow, when you can hold the moon! They whisper in your darkness what others whisper what you are--a slave, a traitor, a liar, a villain.
"You are food." They say.
"You are danger."
"You are emptiness."
"You are running."
"You are desire."
"You are pictures."
"You are words."
"You are toys."
"You are broken."
"You are windows."
"You are tears."
"You are wings."
"You are pillows and forts and late night skies full of stars."
They are always whispering.
But the truth is, you are none of those things, for you are not a thing at all. You have a spirit you inhabit a body, but you are anything but a thing. Free? Open? Alive? Closed? Breathing? You house whatever you wish, but you are not what you do or what or say even. Your soul is an infinite bowl to dip whatever you wish into its depths; power is within you, liberty beside, but never are you, a precious, undefinable and limitless bowl of whatever you wish, defined by a 'what'. And the song continues,
"And we are not afraid of what's to be when this road has just begun
So we will turn our backs and close the doors for the last time. Give me back what's mine.
Give me back what's mine."
k.p.b.
9:37PM
WEDS.
May 6, 2015
