There are Greater Words

There were greater words to be shared

and we decided on taller trees so

that we could hide our heads in the clouds

They called to us:

"Come down from there!"

We replied:

"I can't see and there are raindrops on my cheeks."

Life is precarious.  This seems, after my simple 23 years, to be a point that is not worth arguing.  Life is precarious.  So it is necessary to decide what this life is, and I believe that C.S. Lewis provides us with an important definition of what this life is, and why it is so precarious.  Lewis says "you don't have a soul. You are a soul.  You have a body."  I think this is important because it explains the precariousness that we experience every single day.  We find ourselves in an untenable existence.  One which is as fragile and transient as it is beautiful.  For some reason, despite this precarious situation we continue to place one foot in front of the other and march madly down paths that seem fraught with impossibility and hopelessness.

There is a reason for this march.  I think there are many reasons for it.  Among them lie two things.  Hope and Devotion.  Devotion, whether misguided or appropriated in measured doses, causes us to move forward with the best laid plans and the most ill conceived notions.  It is our best laid plans framed with the purest intentions that end up causing us the most pain.  It is because of hope that our best laid plans dwell and linger on when all is said and done; when try to reconcile with ourselves and our hearts.  It is hope that causes that fire to continue its course.  It is hope that continues to burn.  The failure of our best laid plans is what sets fire to hope, it is what makes us believe that hope has been lost.  It is the ill conceived notions that tend to fade so quickly after their failure.  We always knew that they would lead to nowhere, and they always leave us with hope.

We were, after all, born thousands of years ago as adventurers and we have grown from that point forward. But adventure the true idea, not the word, has been watered down into an unfortunate pool of stagnant water that requires an outside force to make ripples.  We are, all of us, pools of water and we wait for someone to stir us into motion.  We wait for a pebble, a rock, or a heart attack to send ripples shooting through our veins like electricity, or with better luck, blood.  This is our problem.  The true bane of our existence.  We are a generation of immense capability and promise (not unlike the ones before us) raised on apathy and anti-heroes.  That is where we find our difference.

I think it is likely that we have all grown accustomed to fear and its ability to drive us.  I believe that our inaction may speak of apathy, but it is far more likely to be the ever present symbol of vanity.  A vanity that we fear is going to be torn to shreds in that moment that we admit we want something.  That we believe in something.  Vanity is a fragile memory.  We need only stare at wondrous eyes in the mirror, close them, and open them to find it gone as soon as it came.

They called to us:

"You've gone too far!"

We slept:

"..."

The branches held our weight.

And that is how I know I have found a dreamer.

Scared to admit that all the possibilities for greatness are there.

Yet, aware nonetheless.

How completely fragile this system becomes

First we must admit to the possibility:

We were wrong.

Then we stitch these patches back to where they belong:

And we know these branches will never fail...

Building Sandcastles

Building Sandcastles

She was building a sandcastle on the shore.

The early morning sun was just beginning to lend its credence to the water; bestowing warmth and possibility on pebbles, water receding and roiling back on itself, and burning memories into the shoreline with the care of a mad hatter on his vengeance run.

Her footprints led me here.  I picked my way through dunes and fences and old gates.  There were warning signs.

“Beware of tide.”

The tide will pull you under and you will drown.  Like memories.  We have the foresight to avoid them but something always draws us closer.  So I walked with my head down, eyes glued to footprints fading fast.

See, there are nights when the gale here leads the salt winds down alley ways and over fences.  Beyond old gates and across quiet streets it moves into open windows and stirs curtains into a restless dance designed for one.  And the floors creak with the moisture of 100 years.  It is with prudence that the ocean surges forward and rolls back on itself pulling grains of sand, separating lovers that once felt solid as a rock, and dragging the continent into the great wide open.  Sometimes I swear I can feel it.  As if the waves are pounding on my door and my heart it beating faster, and I swear that clock read daybreak long ago.  But the second hand just keeps dripping seconds down the wall.  They collect with the moisture in the floor; sinking in and backing down like memories.

I can feel the bed move and suddenly the floor is alive with moans of betrayal.  The curtains dance in the moonlight and I swear I hear them say:

“Just go back to sleep.”

See, there is a hollow emptiness in the walls.  It swallows the words and they seem to crawl across the pillow to whisper their sentiments into my ear.  One by one, on weak legs, they tremble into my thoughts falling hard.

It is quiet then.

She is gone.

So we begin to feel.  Her in her place and I in mine.  We try to bring life to words that rang hollow with repetition.  We conclude with all of these post-lapserian assurances that repetition breeds familiarity and truth.  Then we wonder: how might it be that when our fingertips touch steel our hearts grow cold?  How might it feel: another’s hand tangled with our own, fingertips searching for life, searching for a pulse.  Where did that heartbeat come from?  It is a heartbeat, a pulse racing, and a million thoughts that ring like a chorus of voices.

Siren songs.

We are the ocean vast, immovable and constantly changing.

In those quiet moments we pick up the pieces.  We lay them out on the table and begin the process of creating something to believe in.  Because the inquisitive love seeks to solve the puzzle.  Our hands tremble as they work to pick up pieces, gray and empty, to create a moment that needs no words.  We build with glue and tape, brimstone and fire, worth and worthlessness, sand and water, careless-broken-faith thoughts and longing-to-be-free notions.  We build in secret.  You in your place and I in my own.  We build in secret and wait for the sun to reveal it all.  Like the lighthouse on a cold dark night.  And just before the sun we extinguish the lamp and begin to wander again.  We wake up.

We wake up.  Or at least we think we wake up.  We pick up our hearts from where we left them in cardboard boxes on floors of closets, under beds and hidden away in sock drawers.  We pick them up with caring tender hands.  We wrap them in cloth and take them somewhere that we might marvel at their fragility.  We take them somewhere to marvel at their power to interact with another and change ones entire world.

You see she was building a sandcastle on the shore…to guard her heart.  Because a storm was coming.  Her pulse needed protection.  Because we all fear the feeling associated with drowning.

She said the castle would be mine to guard.

I have a secret, and I think it could make us beautiful.

But we turn back.  Hearts wrapped in whatever we have left.  We place our hands upon that rough hewn sea wall and try to find sure footing in the dunes.  We try to find home but keep moving backwards.  Back into dark rooms, creaking floors, dancing curtains, empty closets, dusty open boxes, sock drawers rearranged, and prayers left hanging on bedposts and ceiling fans.