To craft out of a heart, a mind.
Why won’t life let me be? Why do you want better for me? Of course I want it for myself also, but I adore the cool of the shade, though in it I don’t grow. They say there’s a pattern to it, however, in the education of trials and tribulations they say many things, and like a lone, misdirected soul, icy and needing warmth to proof, I idle behind them. My mind attesting that their every thought is the truth. But I do not trust my own.
We tell ourselves our minds are against us, that they make up new things. Why can’t you remember that? It was easy. It was also easy to say thank you when the word or thought finally arrived, it is also easy to say sorry when you fall behind. Yes, it is also easy to celebrate yet another day, just as easy as it is for one to get in one’s own way. Maybe, instead it is simple; ‘easy’ is ignorance screaming in the face of wet paint baring the weight of our life tasks. We stretch the word as we limit our imagination, all a reflection of the feelings dealt.
It cannot be easy because as I find myself mounted to the floor unable to even face the ceiling let alone my own scars and my own coups, let alone the world’s trauma and space-time’s youth, being trapped, freezing, knowing my small steps still leave me lightyears away from stomaching the Universe’s truths …I remember. I did not know I knew it to know it was temporarily gone, the feeling that maybe now that I’m lost, my life has begun.
I consult the one who ought to guide me.
It’s a neutral thing my heart, though it quivers and shakes, loves and forsakes, it never truly harbours the storm. It stands at the edge of time itself accepting the fall. It does not fight when it is drowning, it does not scream in distress, it does not sigh when you’re frowning, it does not care to get dressed.
My heart chose to be as it is, somehow it always chose to stay. To continue though the rhythm tells you to stop, this is the end of a day. I let it ring on, as unlike that which speckles life it always rings true - or not at all. It’s not forced to speak just to share in the dialogue, silence my heart might make a virtue.
In the curling clouds and the sands of fear my heart holds tight. It has learnt how to dodge, slip blankly -no forecast- and remove the anger from the fight. I worry about my heart sometimes strong as it may seem. Yes, it does not shatter or shake at the scale of a quake, but nor does it swoon at a sun beam.
I started to question its intentions or whether it aspired to even have any, and if it were conceited or defeated because why would it flow with the motions, but not emotion? I gazed at it through the concrete glass, and I asked it why? It told me What. I said No… Why? Why when the world bawls do you scarcely bat an eye? My heart had no answer you see. Now I was steeped in regret. How can I - how had I become or posed as this ‘me’ if I knew not who my heart was yet.
I churned possibilities out of my mind; why did my heart fall stagnant when my beloved died, why it never danced in the rain, and after all this time undrowning in the pain. Why don’t you celebrate? Hurt? …Why don’t you feel? You’ve been dragged though these stories; I know this is real. So where are you? What is going on? Heart, I swear I know you, there must be something wrong?! You are not empty. You cannot be. Then how am I real? What is this? These tepid flairs, fleeting realities that I scarcely feel? Okay heart come on now, there must be a way. Let me inside. Please. I’m fighting now, and not just for today. I can see you; I have seen you a lifetime before, but now as I look into you as an entity, I stumble still though I’m grounded …I’m not quite sure.
…Heart, I don’t recognise you.
My heart addressed me in its usual virtuous way, silence submerged my brain, but my thoughts set sail anyway.
Who am I if I don’t know my heart? - I’d think on the bus. Who am I if I don’t know what it feels? - Small me would ask the adults I had to trust. Who will I be if my heart won’t let me in? - Would arrest me from my sleep. How can I be if my heart and I are strangers, not akin?
I stumbled over smooth roads and drowned in shallow docks. I fell reticent in the success of my biggest goals, and bawled as I watched the clocks. I hid myself in the shade but somehow still managed to grow, I followed but was not led by the flock. Yet I still did not know. I wilted numb though the third me - the me of this world - made strides the faster time got. I crafted, I changed, sang with, and danced against the waves, cleared the earth from beneath my nails where I had fought with the universe to hold on. In this space I learnt to expose the pane, the window of my words showed the storm inside which reigned. The Chances would ask me to bare all, how when I stumble still, do I crawl again? I pledged I will not give up. My hope is not lost. There is something else for me.
The eternities went on.
“Cold hands warm heart,” maybe my mother was wrong. Maybe, I should have fought to keep my art-life sculptors warm all those years long.
-No!
This cannot be, doubt will divorce me from myself, and sow lack in my drums, and embroider fear in my eyes. Seeing with nothing but hate disguised. I will not accept this. The temptation is not right.
I tried. I helped my mind accept itself. I always gave myself the choice: to go further, or rest until I found the embers persisting inside, which could be rescued to expand and rejoice. Surviving in this broken vacuum between life and death, every moment trying, stumbling still, I heard a voice. A faint heart’s airy words:
…I’m getting there - please stay with me. I thought I had no choice.
