I found the quiet sanctity of life tucked beneath the wrinkled bark of the old willow tree and heard it sing to me through the song of cicadas dancing in the breeze. Life is a fragile, fickle thing– often ending too soon or not soon enough– but always ending. Death and life aren’t two separate things but rather two ends of the same coin, an ouroboros of who we will, and will never be. Those who try to command it soon fall beneath the blade of their own sword, and those who try to run from it can never run far enough. So I’ve stopped running.
My days are much like my nights in that they are often restless and full of life. I tumble out of bed, and I am full of ideas and life is pouring out of me, and I cannot contain it. The very next day, I am a rock, and I cannot move, and it seems to me that I have emptied. I am predictably unpredictable. Clinically, it is ‘bipolar disorder’; however, spiritually, I think that god is just bored and toying with me.
Language and words are a melody, and the truth is a lie fed to you by spoon, but my pot is full of soup, and I keep the ladle turning. Oftentimes, I find myself forgetting words in my mother tongue, and I find myself feeling like a tropical bird in a cage that’s far too small and too far away, forgetting what my forest looked like and what my songs sounded like.
The moon is so far away, and the night is a dark and cold place to be, but my heart is lunar and yearns to be free. I do not know why I love the moon so much, but I do, and for my very first tattoo, I had my friend stick-and-poke the crescent moon onto my ribs. The night holds a promise which it cannot keep, always losing her words to the sunlight that follows. A dance they dance, sun and moon, night and day, death and dying, life and living.
Time in the hospital was circular and never-ending, for there were few clocks, and we could not go outside. I could not shave, for we were not to be trusted with sharp objects, and so, soon, a bush of spikes made my face its home, and there was nothing I could do about it. Time Time Time, Time spent, Time lost, Time passing, and Time never-ending. All I had was Time, and all Time had was me. Most days were spent reading or lying in that hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling, reflecting. Reflecting on what led me there and everything else that has happened in the past 18 years.
I am jealous of birds and bees and butterflies and anything else that flies. My mind longs to feel the wind beneath it, and I long to see the trees dwarf beneath me. But alas, I cannot fly, and all things pretty are quick to die.
Most nights, I do not dream. I find that dreaming is a waste, and on the nights that I do dream, I wake up exhausted because I suspect that I am never truly sleeping when I dream. Sure, I am asleep, but my mind is at work, and my dreams are always elaborate if not haunting. When I was little, there was this recurring dream of me being chased by something. It felt like I was always on the run, and if I kept running, maybe, just maybe, it would never catch me. But it always did, and it always will. You cannot run forever, and soon enough, you will have to face your fears. My fears are sentient, and they consume me. They know that I fear them, and this fuels them.
Thinking thoughts and our thoughts thinking. My mind feels like a mouse on a wheel. There is a piece of cheese on a string atop the wheel, and so the mouse keeps running, deep down, he knows that he can never catch the cheese, but still, he keeps running. I keep running. I do not like cheese. But, still, I keep running.