I have not been able to stop this feeling, this pressure in my chest, this breathlessness, no matter how hard I try. Something is telling me I shouldn’t try to stop it, that this is me breaking out, my heart in its most native and wild form. Yet I am afraid that when the animal inside emerges I will not know how to embrace it.
Beneath a cool cotton t-shirt, I rest my palms on my smooth hips. My skin is hot to the touch. I almost snatch my hands away, but then I knead my flesh deeper with my fingertips, leaving little white circles on my skin that disappear quickly . I realize that this scorching heat is not caused by the sun. The sun may be the fuel that keeps me burning, but it did not spark my life. Hotness radiates from my bones just like the earth's molten core; my blood slides through my veins like lava in secret underground channels. That’s when I realize I can never get rid of this feeling. I can appease it, I can subdue it, I can try to smother it. But this ache is too ancient, too primal, too much a part of my heart, and to exterminate it is to exterminate myself. And I wonder if these feelings are all I am, if there is a mind that can take some credit, or if it is my spirit that is pulling the strings. I wonder if anyone has control over themselves or anything at all.
I was about to write the following lines, but then stopped: The world doesn’t give you what you want, it give you what you need all the time. But I don’t know if this is true. For that matter, I don’t know if anything is true. It seems everything I could assert, and do assert, is easily contradicted by a different point of view. I go around listening to other’s opinions and even spouting some of my own with a sarcasm that is almost imperceptible because I know that nothing anyone can say is absolute. Even if I can’t verbalize the contradictions myself, I still question everything because contradiction is inherent in the world. Opposites are everywhere. Every word, every idea, every object boasts infinite meanings, it just depends on who you ask. How then can I make sense of anything? Of myself? It seems with a mind that craves definition, I cannot. But maybe my soul can simplify the matter. Maybe the one and only meaning is that everything exists, and maybe this is the only notion I need to survive.
Upon contemplating my mind, I’ve stumbled upon a funny realization. It seems, very much so, that consciousness originates from my head. I do not mean this in the ordinary way. That is, I do not draw this conclusion mentally, in virtue of the fact that I know I have a brain beneath my skull. Rather, I feel it to be true in my body with a new clarity. I pay attention to how consciousness feels and appears to my senses and realize that most all of my sensory receptors (my eyes, my nose, my ears, my mouth) are located in one place, my head. My face is like the window of a tall tower. I look down and see my arms and legs, the ground beneath my feet, I look up and see the sky. But I cannot turn my head inward to gaze at my own face, at my own mind. And I will never be able to. I am trapped in this fixed gaze, and I cannot help but remember this as I notice the hair in front of my eyes, the tops of my cheeks and sides of my nose which form the boarder of my world. I know not whether this is a tragedy or a blessing or both.
I know I am good. I just want someone else to know, for them to know as I do, unwaveringly and always. But people do not examine others nearly as carefully as they examine themselves. And neither do I. Is this why we all feel so alone? We are so obsessed with our own identity that we forget that we are just a reflection of everything and everyone else at once. We forget that our differences are merely ripples on a single body of water. We are all little pieces of a collective secret, and we feel so honored and awed to hold our own little piece of the secret that we keep it hidden so deep within ourselves, under thick layers of flesh and pride and fear, that we succeed not only in hiding from others. We bury ourselves so well that we forget the place they are hidden, and we lose our souls within our bodies. We walk around lost, either searching for ourselves in the eyes of others, or too tired to search anymore.
Sometimes I do random things just to do them. Just to experience random feelings without any accompanying reason. Like I am walking down the street and reach out my hand to graze the soft petals of a flower. Why did I choose that flower to touch? Why did the flower summon my hand to hold it for a moment? I do not know why. All I know is it was calling my name in that muffled language that only flowers speak. It’s that silent urge. Like when you see a can in the street and want to kick it. And if you do kick it, with enough force in your foot, enough pang in your toes, and enough clatter of aluminum rolling on concrete, then you feel satisfied. And if you pass the can and don’t kick it, then your foot feels empty, worthless, and your ears feel devoid of sound, as if the breath has been blown out of them. It is that nameless wanting. I try to let it drive everything I do. And when I follow it, I am lead to the most extraordinary places.
Like that time we explored the century old coal mines in the desert mountains bordering the Mojave. All around us piles of ground rock, all beneath our uneven feet, the jagged crunch of cut rock. And nothing but blue sky and grey rocks and uprooted weeds and big caves in the rock and invisible serpentine lizards haunting the shadows between the rocks, and all of a sudden, in the distance a patch of yellow orbs on the craggily hillside. My friends were eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, resting in a cupping slop where a steep grade met the ground. Some soft dirt had accumulated there and some beige grass was peeking out. It was the closest thing to shade. But I could not rest seeing those mysterious spheres in the distance. I was drawn to my feet, and stumbling along a path of rocks, my eyes absorbed the yellow circles that stood out against the hillside like a cluster of miniature moons in an endless night sky. When I got close enough to see the succulent, curly vines and the dark vertical grooves in the vegetable flesh where dust had fallen and stayed, I realized that I had found a pumpkin patch. How strange in a place like this. How very strange. Some pumpkins had skin that was crackly from the sun, gorged open like rotten crescents, and the sweet pulp chewed dry. Some pumpkins were still whole and luscious, painted with lime green stripes like Easter eggs. And little pumpkin seeds, sun bleached and smooth, like stars scattered perfectly along the rocks. I felt like Cinderella, filthy toes slipping into immaculate glass slippers - a perfect fit.
It’s just like that time I was a kid at summer camp, still fumbling around, exploring every dark crevice of the school yard that the other kids ignored. I remember one day I found a treasure map. It was just a piece of scrap paper with some lines drawn on it: a rectangle, a squiggly line, and an X. I had no reason to believe that the artist had intended it as a treasure map. Even if they had planted a treasure somewhere, I had no reason to believe that my interpretation of the map would lead me to the treasure. The rectangle could represent any number of buildings at the school, the squiggly line any number of paths in the dirt, and the X any arbitrary spot. There were no other markers. But I followed the map anyway. I oriented myself to my instincts and treaded a path through some thick bushes until I felt I had come to the right place; until I felt like, if I could look at myself from a bird’s eye view, I would see a big ‘X’ crossing the top of my head. I got down on my bare knees and dug a hole, scratching at the dirt with my fingernails until it came up in crumbling hunks. I cannot explain how I expected to find something. Even at that young age I realized that there was no good reason to believe that I had followed the right path, or chosen the right place. But I really did believe. I trusted my belief. And as I rummaged through the churned earth, suddenly my fingertips grazed something unearthly. I yanked it up and somehow, inexplicably, I had a black leather necklace with a ying yang charm dangling from my hand. Extraordinary. Back then and for a long time after I marveled at how this could have happened. How the world could be so perfect in a moment and how I could have attuned myself to that perfection. Now I know the world is composed of infinite paths which lead to magic. We need only set ourselves on the right tracks.
These stories, these memories form a compilation that is myself. These are the events that have converted me to every belief that I secretly base my life on, beliefs I could not bear to utter until now. When I feel like I am drifting in forgotten emptiness, I go back to these moments and remember that the world is sprinkled with jewels.
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