“We have one collective hope: The Earth. And yet uncounted people remain hopeless. Famine and calamity abound. Sufferers hurl themselves into the arms of war. People kill and get killed in the name of someone else's concept of God. Dare we admit that our thoughts and behaviors spring from a belief that the world revolves around us? Each fabricated conflict, self-murdering bomb, vanished airplane, Every fictionalized dictator, biased partisan and wayward son Are part of the curtains of society's racial, ethnic, religious, national and cultural conflicts? And you find the human ego turning the knobs and pulling the levers. When I track the orbits of asteroids, comets, and planets, Each one a pirouetting dancer in a cosmic ballet, choreographed by the forces of gravity, I see beyond the plight of humans. I see a universe ever expanding With its galaxies embedded within the ever-stretching, four-dimensional fabric of space and time. However big our world is — in our hearts, our minds, in our out-sized atlases? The universe is even bigger. There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on the world's beaches. More stars in the universe than seconds of time that have passed since Earth formed. More stars than words and sounds ever uttered by all humans who have ever lived. The day we cease exploration of the cosmos is the day we threaten the continuance of our species. In that bleak world, arms-bearing, resource-hungry people and nations Would be prone to act on their low contracted prejudices, And would have seen the last gasp of human enlightenment — Until the rise of a visionary new culture once again embraces the cosmic perspective; A perspective in which we are one, fitting neither above, nor below, but within.” Neil Degrasse Tyson
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When I remember the yawning mouths of muskets, how they disgorge a charnel breath of black, sulphur, saltpeter, potassium and ash, I recall the loss and aftermath that makes the motion of my lungs mournful as a funereal march, whose pipe winds moan a dirge of regrets.
If I remember the death, I remember nothing of the life that lent flavor to its end. It does not matter, for I do not remember. I was not there.
When I feel apart, my mind draws circles, lines, vertices and nadir upon the back of my eyelids. I recall that I had knit proud palaces of separation. Despair leaned upon the shadows of the parapets. Depths of loneliness lingered upon the steps.
If you need everyone to agree with you and always be on the same page, you will end up in a very small box. That is something I know from experience.
You cannot know how much humiliation whomever went through or hold a measuring stick up to your suffering and compare it to that of others. Even if you could, that kind of thinking does not serve. Everyone is on their own journey. Respect others journey and they may be more inclined to respect yours.
People are who they are, do what they do, and it doesn't have to be about you, unless you perceive it as such. Perception is powerful. It colors the lens through which you give and receive.
Change your name, change your location, but everywhere you go, there you are. I think it would be better to be open, cast off a skin of scales, allow wounds to bleed.
I cannot harm you. You cannot harm me. We are eternally one, spinning about each other. Becoming each other.
Painful dreams float like toxic clouds upon my broken islands of sleep. Love lost, ambition abandoned, vendettas old, all conjured from the murky recesses of mind in order to facilitate the opening of eyes, to meet some utilitarian task such as urination or a glass of water. Come and go. In and out flow the tides and, neither here nor there, I abide, in this frail, humble abode.
I wander beside the avenue, late in the evening, when screaming cars with blazing eyes are few and far between. Less noise and lights to trouble me.
I sit beside the avenue. I star gaze. Stars gaze back at me.
The hands I did not reach, look askance at me. Raise their empty palms to my cheek, seeking solace. My eyes that are dry riverbeds, look askance at the hands that did not reach for me. Hunger for the touch that did not warm.
Seated in a crowd of quiet, solid faces. What lives within this shell pushes tears to the surface, I brush away, for shame of their revelatory weakness, amidst all this death and strength.
Here, perched upon the wall of uncertain silence, I cannot weep, for I cannot know what begrieves me. All that I did not chance to embrace, remains in the darkness of unknowing.
The eyes I looked away from lose their lustrous colors. The dreams I did not fashion into being, retreat into the primordial ocean.
Words I did not speak. Words I spoke, and were not received. Words I longed to be spoken to me, from lips shut tight as tombs. Those lips that I had longed to kiss, whisper their silent questions in a tongue of forgotten meanings, lost in a labyrinth of syllables.
In the throes of suffering, I am the wick consumed at the heart of the candle. Within the liquid corona of faerie fire, my life is a melting tallow. Within the chrysalis cloak of phantom flame, in whitening lines of ashen decay, I burn away. Am released from pain. Am become nothing.
I walk into the arboretum vast, cold in the long chambered evenings, turn to each visible star, raise my arm, palm outward, index and middle finger extended, the rest folded.
We, who possess the miraculous gift of sentience. Though at rest, we do not have to stay at rest. Though in motion, we do not have to stay in motion. We who are self-aware. Let us exercise our will. Let us change trajectory.
I am not a man. I am an interdependent federation of microbial organisms. I am the interlocking arms and sweeping wings of the river. I am not human. I am the bristling beard and razored knuckles of the coral reef.
Blue Springs in the winter of 03. An amorphous webwork of light plays across the rough skin of a manatee, below the surface of the waters. All is submerged in silence as it turns in its spiral dance. The warm depths of waters disgorge in a steady channel, fat bubbles of air. I was not there.
Bird feathers caught on a breeze, swirl in orbit of each other. Bending, twirling, notes upon the wind’s mercurial music. The clear tones of a child’s laugh. Reaching, grasping fingers ache to join the dance.
Flying feet, tall grass, touched by outstretched hands. Blazes of sunlight pour through breaches of the cloud canopy. A fragrance of earth, flowers and beasts. I, was not there.
I am not judged. I am not cherished. I am not feared. I am not loved. I, am not there.
I am not a living poet, but a living poem. I am not the singer. I am the song.
I am not there I, am not there I am no thing I am everything I am nothing
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Missio Or I am not there By Daniel Christensen Writing as The Fire Elemental
“Love says 'I am everything.' Wisdom says 'I am nothing.' Between the two, my life flows.” Nisargadatta Maharaj
