To become eloquent enough in my own worldview, that I could tell a stranger, when asked, say, at a party, or some other event where I would meet strangers, what it is exactly, that I believe, would require much remembering, of memories not even fully formed, or able to be remembered accurately, and depending on my mood, at that moment in time, and what I had heard or been convinced of recently, and so on. But the point is—and now, I cannot speak for all, though I wish I could, because I believe it to be true for all, but I will save myself from arrogance by speaking only for myself—my beliefs are fickle. They change often, even though I try to put them all through rigorous testing. Blah blah, not sure if this one passes the test.
Month: January 2021
Universal soil
I need something to bite on, to feed me, to metabolize and make work my body that lives according to the laws of nature which I have studied and memorized and tested on in school—for all those years, until now, when all the questions that come rushing in, are the ones we never studied. With nothing to bite onto, my jaw jabbers until it detaches, my brain liquifies and oozes out of my ears, my appendages start to come apart at the joints, and all other parts of what I hitherto believed to constitute myself, begin to spread apart and return to the one homogenous universal element that fills all of space and time, and has no name other than any of all the divine pronouns that the many religions have invented over the years. This, to me, though I do not know it fully now, is like the deck, under which the dog at that house in my memory, crawled to die. The universe is under that deck for me, where I will finally crawl and lie and learn to die, and then decompose into the universal soil, which is all there ever really was.
Spaceship
When my brother and I were younger, we used to play a game called “spaceship.” He would crawl out of his bed and get into mine, and we would lie next to each other and prepare our cockpits, which involved fluffing pillows and folding sheets and ultimately pulling the top blanket over our heads. Then we were locked in, with our fingers on top of a pillow, pretending it was a dashboard full of different buttons and levers and knobs all different colors and blinking and beeping. It then fell to me to create what we were seeing as we flew through space. Often this involved enemy ships that we battled or asteroids that we dodged or distant planets that we engaged hyperspeed to get to.
Last night, I played spaceship on my own. My brother was not there. He is in St. Louis. We are grown now, but I bet he would still play with me if I asked, even though we would probably need a bigger bed. Anyway, last night I played on my own. I set up the cockpit and started to imagine what I was seeing in space. I did not imagine any enemy ships, for whatever reason. I mostly imagined asteroids and small planets that I had to lean my shoulders left and right to dodge. Then I imagined nothing, and this is what struck me.
Without creating any other celestial objects in my mind’s eye, there was only black dark space. I imagined myself flying in a spaceship alone through the empty void. I cannot remember how long I stayed awake doing this.
Waiting for baby
I have waited for baby for weeks to get here. At least this morning, she will be here tonight, and I don’t have to go to bed one more night waiting, which is really the worst of the waiting—at night before bed, unable to sleep, full of the energy of waiting, which is the exact opposite of the calm necessary to slip into sleep. This morning I can let the energy abound, as I know the satisfaction it seeks will be here tonight. But I must remain present, she tells me, and not look so much to the future. So I sit here and type and work at my desk and try to get my mind, body, and soul all to focus on anything other than the one thing that they all want.