identity
Do you ever feel like you've tried everything to solve a problem, and nothing has worked?
So maybe I'm trying to solve the wrong problem.
Why do my fingertips still find the tops of mountains?
Why does my mouth find the beach,
tongue pulled from my mouth by the tides,
voice drowned in salt water?
Why are my eyelashes just pine branches,
sap tears,
a dark hole underneath holding maybe nuts or squirrels or the abandoned web of a long-gone spider?
Deer walk on my skin, too soft-footed.
I think the reason I like it,
need it,
ropes and darkness and the illusion of fear,
is because at that moment all the masks fall away.
Give me that moment of honesty, when we are all as close to animals as it's possible to be.
Take me there, to where we can no longer pretend that anything matters except breath and rope and exhilaration.
Take me away from this ill-fitting suit that pinches at the seams.
Maybe it's this:
that a mountain can only ever be what it is.
The water and the deer and the trees and the salt in my beard,
trustworthy simply by virtue of what they are,
and that they are.
Backwards time is easy.
Close then far then farther behind me,
wrapping around to my left and then off into the distance.
Forwards time doesn't exist,
empty space solidifying under each step.
Do I time it?
Take every inch of sidewalk rolling away under my feet,
imagine it laid down in front of me into something I can recognize?
What is the problem I'm trying to solve?
I need nature, movement, community, music
I have a roof over my head and food on my plate, and now come all the other needs, parched and insubstantial from years of drought.
The problem is that it's all junk.
All the things.
All the order.
All the needless complexity.
The drum beats in my heart.
YOU HAVE SKILLS. USE THEM.
THESE CHAINS ARE OLD AND TIRED. THROW THEM OFF.
Each time I push up out of the dirt, I hear it a little louder.
More than time and ears and chains,
the problem I'm trying to solve is this:
behold,
a spirit so hungry it keeps mistaking street lights for the moon.