halfway

With a groan, I closed my eyes even tighter to shut out the bright world outside. Where I lay now, it seemed only half of my senses were alive – and I don’t mean the five senses, or at least I don’t think so. A coral light filtered in through my eyelids, and I was at peace. The shadow of a figure crossing the room put a wall between me and my serene world. I winced in anticipation of being roused. A moment later I had slipped back into my delirium. My feet, as I could feel them, were warm and still, until, with a tiny movement, I realized that they too were asleep. Cold and lifeless being bent for too long.

My mind was half alert, in between waking and sleeping. Part of me tried to stay inside my mental state, the other half refused to fight back, gradually forcing me into realization. Eventually, I tested the light. Immediately my eye clenched down after one brilliant beam shone through, magnified by the window. As my face cringed at the pain, my mind was jolted and began to slowly start churning. I felt I could hear the gears clicking, their repetitiveness working in rhythm with my heartbeat.

I could remember a time when I was looking up at a bookcase. The shelves that I could reach were not good enough; I was dissatisfied. The top shelf was too high for me to see over, but I could see the corner of a piece of paper edging off the top, enticing me to look. I couldn’t reach. I thought perhaps it was useless, just a scrap of paper, but part of me could not resist the mystery. I got a chair, climbed up, and, with a wave of anticipation, I beheld what I had been wondering at. My excitement was met with ho-hum and disappointment. The shelf was as I suspected. A smooth wooden surface covered with a layer of gray dust. My hopes were dashed as even the mysterious old paper was a simple empty page. I had half expected it, yet my mind was anxious to play along and so I let myself believe that there would be something more, something other than what was so normal, so expected. Yet I had known…

That memoir was something similar to what I felt now. I knew deep down that this sublime and careless feeling wouldn’t last, yet my mind raced to deny it. Fighting uselessly against myself simply firmed the knowingness. Nearly by accident my eyes slit open to take in yet another dose of excruciatingly painful brilliance. Again I tried to shut it out. I could almost feel the pupils of my sensitive blue eyes closing and opening to adjust to the rapid changes of light. A deep sigh settled my restless nerves and allowed me to once again attempt to stay in my own little world, in this limbo of sleeping and waking.

My breathing slowed. The drumming in my ears echoed my slowing heart as my body shook with each repeated beat.

M.fs

Let it Go

Recently, I was looking through a box of memories, almost like a scrapbook – I found an old receipt for coffee at Starbucks, a song I’d written for a friend, a cutout from a crossword puzzle I did ages ago, and some other useless memorabilia. It got me thinking, “Why do I have all of this?” A lot of people say not to keep so-called “junk”, or trash, which I completely agree with. No need to have clutter lying around all the time, and no need to have more than one drawer or box for it. The thing is, most of us wish we had a rewind button for life [actually, most of us wish we had a "pause", "fast forward", "skip", and "repeat" button for life, but this post is not about those life-buttons.]. Well, these pictures, receipts, letters, cut-outs, fragrances, songs, etc, are all things that remind us of those times. It’s our substitution for a rewind button.

In this case, it’s okay to have a little bit of “junk”, so long as it doesn’t contradict these two things: 1) It’s not overruling your life, personal space – your clutter cannot be controlling. Keep it contained to one drawer, one box under the bed, or one scrapbook on the shelf. 2) It’s not memories we’re keeping simply to get that feeling most people call “want”. Many people want to feel “desire” and become obsessed with the feeling, and in the end, they’re depressed because they never got what they made themselves believe they wanted; in fact, it’s not what you truly want, what you truly desire. It’s a substitution for what we want, because we’re confused as to what our true desire is. We try to compensate for the lack of knowledge (because we don’t know what we want), and replace it with other feelings, wants, desires. I fell into this trap a couple times, but believe me, if you just let it go, clean out your life, everything turns out to be fine.
This is a clip of a lyric I recently wrote concerning this point:

If I could start all over,
If I could start anew.
If I could open up my window,
And fly above all that bright blue.
I’d circle endlessly around this,
I’d fly without a care,
I’d watch the clouds around me float,
Suspended not by gravity or air.
I wish that I could start all over,
I wish I could have done it differently.
I wish that life had a rewind button,
I wish I’d hit it accidentally.
How many things I’d try to do again,
How many things I wouldn’t do.
Try not to get my heart all broken,
Try not to be afraid to move.
I’d fly around in fearlessness,
And see it from a different view,
I’d soar above my hopes and dreams,
I’d soar above the oceanic blue.
I wish that I could start all over,
I wish I could have done it differently.
I wish that life had a rewind button,
I wish I’d hit it accidentally.
If I could start all over,
If I could start anew.
I’d pray G-d help me every time,
And pray He help me let it go.

M.fs