Yourself is the first character you learn to write. How can you write anything else? Or, is it the other way around? We are born with omniscience, and then slowly, crammed into ourselves. Looking at a tree, I see it as firewood, something to climb, or shade. Then, if I try, I can imagine what it would be like to be thirsty for water and yearn to grow. But these are my terms. Can I ever get far enough outside of myself to see from the true perspective of the tree? Another way to solve the problem would be to redefine ourselves. Are we ourselves? Or, are we everything? A journey inward, or a journey outward—they may both lead to the same place. 

I want so much. I want to listen to music, but then I realize music is already playing. I want to eat, but I’m not really that hungry. I want to work when I’m bored, and I want to be bored when I’m working. I even want to want, I realize, when I get down to it, but only insofar as that want will soon be  satisfied. Otherwise, I don’t have the patience. I am like a child, wanting all the time. And I must learn to give.  

As one of the trees in our apartment grows, the leaves on the topmost branches grow broader, seemingly at the expense of the lower leaves, turning yellow and falling off. I cannot decide whether it is unfair, or just the way of things. Are the lower yellow leaves happy to support the tree as a whole? Sacrificing their own lives for the leaves on the topmost branches, which reach for the light that is necessary to sustain the whole tree. Or do they shake their fists at the upper class of leaves? Angry to have their own lives cut short, even if it is for the good of the whole tree. 

In yoga, the two-sided symmetry is disruptive of the playfulness in my practice. As I flow, I think of nothing, other than the present posture, until I feel a desire to move into another posture, and then I do so, without second-guessing. With postures like forward fold, downward dog, or child’s pose, this is no problem, because these are all symmetrical postures. In other words, they are postures that are equal for both sides of my body. But when I enter into my warrior postures, which are necessarily focused on one side of my body or the other, then I am pulled from my playfulness, because now I must remember which side I have done, and which side still needs attention. In this moment, I wish that I were truly one, like a line. And not two, as I am, with two eyes and two arms and two feet. Being two, I must remember both, and cannot think only of myself. 

Sometimes I forget where I am, when I’ve been focused on my work at the desk for a while, or right when I wake up from a nap. My mind reels as I look around and try to refamiliarize myself with my surroundings. What I’m really trying to get at is that moment when I am unsure. It is indescribable, I think, but I will try. First, it is fleeting. It lasts for an imperceptibly short amount of time. Once you realize it is happening, it is already over. Second, it is disorienting. It is impossible to focus on anything else for that moment. Your mind is retreating to its primal instincts and trying to figure out what the heck is going on, especially with regard to your body’s position in the physical world. All other thoughts are secondary until that is resolved. And then I realize, “Oh, I am at home, sitting at my desk.” And then the moment is instantly finished, as everything falls all over each other, rushing back to being familiar. And the disorientation is gone, to be replaced by what my mind has seen so many times before, and therefore dismisses as given. 

Cooking, I get a whiff of a smell that reminds me of the cafeteria where I went to grade school. I am transported there. I am small again. There are stains on my white polo shirt from the asphalt of the playground. I am upset because we have to stand in line in alphabetical order when we are waiting for lunch, and the girl I like happens to have a last name that is alphabetically far away from my own. I am hungry, but I am not self-aware enough to know that that that is why I am so excited to be standing in line for lunch. I’m just excited all the time, for everything, until one small thing happens, and then it seems like the whole world is ending. I can remember the condensation on the milk cartons in the freezer on wheels. At some point in the morning, you had to tell the teacher if you wanted vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry. I always chose vanilla. I didn’t like chocolate then as much as I do now. For a period of time, I had to bring my lunch from home. My dad’s business wasn’t doing too well and my parents said that buying lunch from the school everyday was too expensive. It was doubly bad because I didn’t have anything good to trade. My mom would pack healthy lunches, but none of the other kids wanted to trade their cookies for my carrots. 

I think I’ll sit inside and watch the green wax solidify inside of the glass candle that was burning, before being blown out. Now the room is filled with smoke. I open a window on one side of the room and a door on the other to create a draft. Now the sounds from outside are starting to get in. The wax is still very liquid. I wonder how long it will take. I’m not sure that I have the patience. 

I get low for a while and think it’s all over, until I get good again and hope it will last. I’ve started to measure how old I’ve grown according to how fast I remember that both the low-groveling and the high-flying are temporary, and each have to be patient waiting their turn while the other is in the spotlight. I am just a spectator, and the more I can stay out of it, the better. 

The first taste of food in the morning, like first light when you open your eyes, acts as a reminder of a sense forgotten. Each one of these sensual awakenings is part of the process of coming back from the dark sleep world to a reality full of physical possibility. A green grape, as it happens to be, on the morning that I write this. In a white bowl, only half of the bunch is leftover. They are plump and wrapped in thin skin that can barely contain their sweet translucent meat. I regret now, not having savored the moment a little more. Maybe rolling the grape around with my tongue before biting in and chewing it all to mush. But I was not thinking then, until the taste awakened my mind. 

I am stronger, as a whole, for the two halves of me, fighting all the time. My structure, having to hold together, and contain the orgiastic art, always trying to get out and wreak havoc. And so too, for the havoc, pushing out, until the structure breaks, and like a flock of sheep without a shepherd, the art wanders all around, until the organizer returns to bring it all back together. In this way, the havoc must burst forth with more might in the future, if it hopes to break free, as the organizer grows wiser and stronger, so too must the creative chaos become even more chaotic. Each half trades blows like this, never allowing me to become fully one or the other, but still, I am greater as a growing whole, as a result of their struggle. 

On Sunday morning, it’s smoky outside. The forests have been burning in California. The news says it’s not healthy to breathe the air, so we’ve been inside our studio apartment all weekend. On Friday night, we fought. I felt terrible. When I tell her I love her, I mean it. I never understood before how you can fight like this with someone and still love them so much. On Saturday, we woke up unsure of each other. At breakfast, we talked some more. By lunchtime, we were coming back together. At night, we ate cookies and watched a movie. On Sunday morning, our love is rekindled like new. 

My mind is too mired, to see this as you say. Even though I might look into your eyes, as long as I can without blinking. And wad up my memory into a big paper ball, to which I would set fire, and put the ashes in a safe, and drop the safe in the middle of the ocean—still, I could not tear from myself completely. Come close, and let me listen, to see as much as I may. But I will not get all the way. I am sorry. 

She offers me a bite of her chocolate bar. “I just brushed my teeth,” I tell her. “Just one bite,” she says. I laugh and say, “Didn’t you hear me? I just brushed my teeth. One bite would be as bad as two.”

By a vague sense, that art, at least, of all things, matters, I am driven on. So that any time spent on my own survival, seems secondary, or even less, to the nth, in rank of importance, and therefore, in rank of what I should be doing. “Important” being that vague smokescreen behind which all of my not-too-fleshed-out philosophy hides. Spending time meanwhile, I grumble about my survival duties in the day, snatching what moments I can in the night, to blurt out art that comes during or after dreams. Reluctant to wipe the sleep out of my eyes and go about the day, I always say, “When I don’t have to work anymore …” That’ll be the day. When I can finally make it. When I’ll have enough time. When I’ll … what? I don’t know if I could tell you in specifics. But I think, truly, there will be a great void to meet me, when that day comes. And I am better off shoving my art into the small crannies in the meantime. Because that might end up being all that I’ll ever get.