A Fragmented Story

Here is a fragmented story I wrote when I was on a walk the other day. You will notice it follows some common themes with my other posts, but I wanted to share it with you all anyways.

She walked there. To the bridge. Then the bench. By the river. Physically she was moving through the real world, the one other people see and live in alongside her. Music helped everything match her heart's world though, which is equally as real, just slightly more vivid. More open. The breeze is felt but tasted as well. Water flows and ripples but creates colors as well. People walking past her are regular people, but stories trail along behind them as well. Each person living out their own novel that she can read parts of thanks to just a little music.

Life isn't like the movies but movies are like life. With just a little background music and a little opening of our hearts we will catch beautiful qualities in our lives that are more stunning than movie moments for the pure reason that they are tangible. Palatable.

So she walked there, and sat on the bench, and just was. Sometimes when you are feeling so deeply, it is necessary to just be. Then all of the extra feelings get to unwind and spread out. Float around a bit. Breath. And then she can to.

Anyways, she was sitting there, and he was passing. He said her name and she turned. She smiled and waved him over, grinning of the movie-quality of the moment.

"Whoever is making my move just went completely giddy," she thought. Or maybe they knew already? Placed her there on purpose, even though the walk had been her idea. How does it work, circumstance? Is it really planned by someone? Is it magic? Should it just be left alone, no questions asked? Let's go with that one for now.

So he sat down there, next to her. Funny how he chose that particular spot because the golden dust in that column of sun fell perfectly across his face, ending at his hand on his well-wardrobed knee. As she was pondering this he was pondering as well, about circumstance. About his good fortune in walking this way today because he had just been on a walk himself. Feeling all open, all unfolded. And he was thinking about her being unfolded, because he knew she was. In fact, that was what had drawn him to her, their matching unfolded hearts.

"I see you," he said in place of "hello".

At the same time the same portions of each of their hearts folded up ever so slightly. And they smiled.

There is a possibility this will be continued in the future...

Horton as a Moment

A moment should be a fleck. Or a speck perhaps. A little floating molecule of dust very similar to the home of some creatures known as Whos. I believe Horton found them? Well that is a slight digression, but my point remains that a moment should be a speck. SHOULD. What a funny word.

Because you see, a moment is not always a speck. In fact, many times it is much more in both size and weight. It can be more like Horton. A giant elephant that climbs on to your shoulders and sits there. You do not want to carry him around, after all he is merely one moment. Undoubtedly others have already forgotten about his existence, and yet there he is, sitting on your shoulders, making you hunched over. And the thing is you let him sit there. You carry him around because you are unwilling to stop thinking about him. Stop pondering that moment in which you acquired him, when something that should have been insignificant occured and suddenly became the most significant thing in existence. There is that word again, SHOULD.

So how do we take the extra weight away? Reduce it back its proper smallish size? Perspective is always an option. Compare your Horton to past happenings, and perhaps next to their size he will shrink. Compare him to the rest of your life, to the future, the bigger picture, and perhaps you'll be able to laugh him off.

If comparison doesn't work, I suggest a meeting with yourself. To meet up with myself, I usually take a walk, alone except for my music of course. Cannot be without music. On those walks I look at myself face to face, and have a little mental discussion (as in a discussion that occurs in my mind, not one that is mental in nature, though having a conversation with oneself probably does sound a bit nutty...it is necessary I promise). I go over the moment, outline all the reasons I am allowing it to crouch on my shoulders. Once I've done that, I toss the outline, allow it to blow away in the wind, and instead keep an outline of all the ways I can avoid a similar moment in the future. So then I have taken an elephant sized moment and not only reduced it into a speck, but learned something from it as well. It is a self-empowering feeling. When it works. And seeing as I am not perfect, it can't always work. Sometimes Horton climbs down for a while, and then hops back on. But either way, it is a start. And eventually, he will go away. He was only a moment after all.

Fortress of People

People. Oh people, people, people. I learn from you. I become frustrated because of you. Joyous. Lovesick. Excited. So many different things we cause each other to feel. Sometimes we hate each other. Feel like we could be so much better off in the comfy place that is our imagination, where perfect things happen. But then we remember we need each other. Sometimes that imagination which can be so comfy can also be suffocating. Instead of helping us remember who we are, it makes us forget, gets us lost in a maze of too many thoughts. And in those instances we need someone to reinstate us into reality. Those of us who have such a person are lucky. Tremendously lucky.

So we build a fortress of people around us. Family comes first. For some that will mean blood relatives, that support that was built-in for us when we came into the world. But there are others who have less conventional families. Friends or mentors who have filled in the gaping holes left in the spaces where their built-in support was never built. Those sorts of families are just as real as those who share our blood. After that layer there is a layer of friends, comrades. Next, the lovers (though over time one lover is likely move into the family circle). We spend time creating this fortress. We make ourselves vulnerable to build it, because to build a solid fortress we have to be connected to the walls around us. How do we connect? By handing out little pieces of ourselves, very gently. That is why this fortress takes time, building trust is a meticulous process. Once it is gained however, we hand that person a little morsel of us that they can add to their hearts. In doing so we create a mortar unlike any other.

And yet some of the people leave still. After all that time. After we've let them become part of us. They just go away. And we have to decide what to do with that vacant spot. Maybe they weren't there long, what do we do then? Fill the vacancy right away? Do we mourn the loss? Do we work on forgetting them? Pretend they were never there?

No.

No, that cannot be right.

We have to leave the space. Yes, final decision, the space must remain. At least for a little while.

Why? Because it reminds us of that person, and maybe we don't want to remember the person right now, but some portion of our time with them has taught us something. Obviously, because there is a visible hole there. That person left an imprint, and we might as well use it for future reference. Maybe one day someone will fill that space and stay forever. Or maybe it will remain empty forever because it needs to be a constant reminder of everything we learned from that person, even if they were not there long. We opened up to them, we folded them into our fortress, so we must have learned something. And it is good to know our histories. No, it is good to feel our histories.

That way we know which things are good to repeat. And which aren't.