Friday, April 28, 2017

something personal

I sometimes miss those rainy dreary days when I’d wake up early in the morning to grey cloud filtered light, barely able to see the paper of my journal in which I’d write and I’d listen to the same music over and over again because it explained exactly how down I felt in anticipation of facing every inevitable bad day that I knew would always be the same, dragging me lower and lower nearly towards an inescapable fate. As horrible as those days were, I felt so real in the mornings contemplating what had become and where I was and what I wished for with just enough hope that someday a difference would come. My children, just babies then, would come and sit on my lap as I listened and thought and wrote sad things, sipping yerba mate that helped me hang on while I held on to them and the rare feeling in my world that felt right. By the time the first was older, the second came and sat on my lap just the same and I wrote more sad things in that same place under the grey cloud filtered light again as if the sun never shined but in those eyes, asking again to be held and content in that moment to be held by me is a feeling I can still remember and how right it felt. 

Thursday, April 20, 2017

finding a porpoise

On a rather boring day of a boring week in the middle of his boring life he decided he needed to do something different and so he additionally decided he needed to look for a porpoise because he heard they were plentiful in the seas but in all actuality he had never seen one in the wild. He considered his options for porpoise searching and wondered if he would need apparatuses such as rafts or row boats or motor boats. He had none of those things and began to feel his hopes of finding a porpoise drift away much like a school of porpoises swimming off in the sunset at hypersonic speeds, because he knew porpoises were fast. He resolved not to lose all hope and ran to the beach and striped off his shirt and pants and shoes and socks and ran and dove into the waves and swam out towards the horizon in search of a porpoise. In his excitement and enthusiasm he didn’t anticipate his body’s need to recover from the exertion he compelled himself towards so he stopped for what he thought would be a brief moment to catch his breath, but his mind took a brief assessment determining that his body was fatigued and relayed a message to his consciousness to take the appropriate measures. Upon the appearance of thoughts to find a place to rest he looked around himself for the shore because he knew he would need to swim back but was disheartened when he realized it was beyond sight. His mind began sending rapid fire messages to his consciousness to do something to give himself some rest, which caused a slight panic within him but he willed himself to slow down his thoughts and floated on his back while he tried to put himself in a state of mind where he could find a solution to his predicament. The shifts of waves and currents caused him to struggle and exert further energy and effort continuing to tire him when what he wanted was rest, but still he tried until he realized that in that moment what he wanted more than anything was to live. He realized he had forgotten all about finding a porpoise but he began to remember his quest to find one and thought about how his search brought him into his current circumstances. As his focus began to shift from holding onto life to finding a porpoise, his body slowed down and relaxed and sank down to the point that his face was all that remained above water, just barely able to breath, tasting drops of salty water and licking his lips. He didn’t realize it but he was compelled to only one or the other. As he thought about his desire to find a porpoise, he forgot about holding on to his life and he stopped trying. Without trying, he soon slipped under and succumbed to the weight of his exhausted body. Instinctively he held his breath and a panic began to build for search of a way to breath but then the thought of porpoises again filled his mind and he smiled underwater and it was the last thing he ever thought.