Familiar
Normalcy overlays itself on the tapestry of snow and ice that covers the land, or so I thought. It is incredible that moments in an instant can just shatter like glass, causing us to stare and reflect into their messy aftermath. Why today? What does it mean? Why you?
Femininity wrapped in an ambiguous fog. Beauty shrouded in mystery. You’re stunning, but not in a conventional way which inspires an affair of the heart. No, this is different. I am an awe of your essence, the animating force which brings life to the flesh. My soul loves what the senses can’t ever hope to enjoy. You seem so… familiar yet are a complete mystery. Is the fog which compliments your beauty an illusion of the mind?
Deeper we go. The journey begins. Let’s take it slow. Temptation can’t win.
Chapter I to the mind. Book number II to the soul. Words and excuses to talk to you fall from my lips like abstract ashes in the wind hoping that something will stick. “I love that book you’re reading! What it says about emotion and its connection to the human spirit is so fascinating. What do you think of it?”. Uneasy caution arises in eyes that are unsure if it likes what it sees. “It’s good, but frankly I can’t help but roll my eyes when it mentions our collective past. It’s just so…I don’t know…out there ya know?”. A conversation blooms in a bookshop seeking to act as a medium for enrichment and connection. Unfortunately, what bloomed was contradiction and not synchronicity. Words on the one hand are in flow. Unaware onlookers would see a scene where compatibility acted as the genre of the room. Oh god if only. What is said harmonizes, but the backdrop of emotional undercurrents flail in disarray. We aren’t connecting. But why?
Pleasant sounding goodbyes. Nice to meet you. Long disappointed sighs. Hunches which seemed anything but true.
Days. Weeks. Seasons. Snow gives way to rain as the death of winter gives way to the life of spring. Temperatures are rising while feelings of content maintain its altitude right below the clouds. Out of reach completeness. Formless itches which can’ be scratched. I am happy with life, but I can’t get you out of my mind. Emotions are layered. Some are surface level reactions that leave us within the blink of an eye. Others possess and haunt us, speaking to us when the distractions of the world bleed into deafening silence. These deeper feelings are a compass to the soul, pointing us toward what we care about and where we need to go. I know we are going to cross paths again one day. Uncertainty in the when, absolution in the will.
Life’s movie plays on. The sun cycles over the horizon in a flash as the Earth continues its immortal march amongst the stars. Years have gone by. My chaotic essence has been structured and deepened with time. Pain and struggle mold what is desperate for form. It is winter again as the hour hand of seasons time nears midnight. Dark roast lingers against the warm light of a coffeehouse whose exterior is covered in ice. Buried deep in the abstract and away from the surface of the world, an inexplicable 6th sense forces my focus to resurface into the here and now. As my eyes obey the muse of the cosmos, I see that mysterious women from all those years ago enter through the door. Covered in frost and exhausted from the harshness of the outside world, she walks in by herself clearly wishing to stay awhile. Emotional tumultuousness forms a marriage with deja vu in the new. Oh boy here we go again.
Reasons to talk with you present themselves in crystal clarity as the threads of the evening begin to tie themselves together. Sitting right across the table, she begins to sketch an extremely elaborate tree immersed in symbolism and mist. Moonlight, water, and chain wrap themselves around the base of this creation. “That’s a beautiful picture you are working on! But for some reason it makes me sad. Does your art have any particular meaning behind it?”. A smile that is happy to share replies, “It is a representation of me. The tree is what I am continually growing towards. The moonlight and what it illuminates is the spirit. The chains are the barriers I create for myself, and the mist is the mask that I show the world. The water meanwhile represents how easy everything could be if I stopped acting like a mirror, showing the world what I think it wants to see.”
A conversation blooms, but unlike last time it's much more… complicated. Temporary raw authenticity leads to a flurry of connection. What we are meant to be shines through, as artistic expression allows us to embody the ultimate conclusion of what it means to be ourselves. The mist begins to clear. Wait. Stop. Don’t go there. Misstep. Dissonance. The strike of the wrong chord, the return of the mask once more. Interaction bleeds into decay. Psychological reaction and counter-reaction chase one another into a suffocating narrowing of the world. Words in disarray. Emotional undercurrents desperate for intimacy in a moment gone mad. I need to act fast. For God sakes be brave.
A call from the other side. Words which aren’t my own spill out from my mouth. “Life is beautiful, but living is hard”. An uncomfortable pause. Strange vulnerability. Out of the psychological and into the spiritual. “What did you say?”. Awe, sadness, and warmth shine through your face. You are unsure if you heard what you wanted to hear. “I said life is beautiful, but living is hard”. Eye’s lock in silence as the motion of the world grinds to a halt. The people of the coffee shop turn into Silhouettes. Silhouettes transform into shadows. Shadows become consumed by the void. The world ceases to be as eyes monopolize entirety. I see you and only you. Words and emotion lose themselves in a symbiosis of pain and mutual understanding. As spirits connect, the eyes receive permission to broadcast channels from lifetimes ago.
Chapter II to the mind. Book Number One to the Soul. I see a soldier on a battlefield. Smoke. Ash. Blood. Fire consuming the old. A renegotiated existence. An uneasy peace. “I was just following orders!”. The smashing of a lamp. Boots bury guilt which doesn’t want to be found. Was what he…I did wrong? I don’t know. I was never brave enough to dig. I see a women. The genre of her life changes like the shifting of the wind. Innocence and the American dream in one moment, tragedy and the collapse into chaos in the next. Stability? It wasn’t in the cards. Adventure? You can bet your life on it. The beginning of your life was like an hourglass. Each grain of sand its own beautiful moment. As the final grain descends however, a bullet rings out. Newfound pain imprints itself on naiveté. A broken family. The death of a father. The bitterness of a mother. Chapter II to your old life was hard, but it wasn’t your finale. You had dreams of bringing beauty into the world, and death wasn’t going to get in the way.
The soldier cries under a moonlit tree. Experiencing her own hell, she holds and comforts the stranger. Escapism, empathy, and subconscious attraction was the trifecta of your motivation. Ash covered fields with a single flower that rises above. We held each other there in that bombed out hellscape, finding love in the most unlikely of places. “It wasn’t your fault” she says. “Your Dad would’ve been proud” I say. Words become poetry for the soul, fueling the inner flames desperate need for oxygen. You quite literally saved me. Kiss-laced tears replace existential fears. “I want to be a painter one day” you say. “With so much ugliness in the world, people need a piece of heaven to lose themselves in. With enough loveliness in our surroundings, maybe people wouldn’t feel the need to destroy themselves like this”. Temporary salvation suddenly becomes interrupted by a rain of bullets piercing the mist on that foggy night. “Run! I’ll come back for you. I promise”. A parting goodbye. Agony-soaked legs. Explosions of blood on flesh. I was chained up like a dog. You were barely able to get away.
Tuning Out. Turning Away. I want to shout. Don’t make me stay.
I am back in the coffee shop. Our focus is shattered as past vision bows it’s knee to present perception. The movie of us that I was experiencing through your eyes ends abruptly. I can’t take it! Tears and loud ugly cries etch themselves into wood tables like fingerprints, as my head buries itself into my arms wishing to hide from God knows what. It’s too much! Our duet in that coffee shop is one of the overwhelmed. We are two singers which just can’t seem to catch their breath. Raindrops from your face dictate the beat while exasperated gasp from mine form the melody. Minutes drag on like hours as the heart desperately tries to understand what it was never meant to.
Eventually you say, “We need to see this to the end. I need to know what happened”. Argument abounds, objections and counter objections explode like fireworks in a dark and uncertain sky. Fear and curiosity collide as one tries to have its way with the other. You see a love story that needs to be told. I see the inevitability of a POW camp when the film is allowed to roll on. “I can’t explain it, but I need this to feel complete. Please, do this for me”. Deep breaths and frenzied contemplation, are we really going to do this? Of course we are. The internal compass of the soul is pointed towards its own north star, and that star is located right down there in hell. In order to go up, I must descend into the heart of what we seek to run away from.
Tuning in, the eyes must speak what is within. In the depths of you, the past again is in full view.
Eye’s locked, hearts completely open. Background music abruptly dies and becomes the silence. The doorways of your perception once again become my everything. Irises become the rose. The rose dies, wilted and black. Dead darkened petals snap off, floating into the wind until it dissolves into a sea of ash. Lifeless ash swirls like a whirlpool, constituting a memory in ever greater detail as the form which eventually becomes you assembles itself into full view. You feel… nothing? Emotional disassociation confronts tragedy, it was your drink of choice to numb a body that refused to give itself permission to feel. Angry words baked into lifeless tonalities. “I will get you to come back” you utter. Looking at you say those things is like staring into an icy desert that contains a fire of almost unbearable heat which burns in the distance. As your fire burns, it melts apathetic ice and creates a wall of dissipated mist which hides your intensity from the world. You cared so much but showing that to the world wasn’t something you were going to do.
The story of us flips to the next page as our mutual point of view shifts in focus. Thousands of feet up above the ground, earth flows beneath my feet at a million miles per second until I see myself in that ugly place. Screams and broken dreams echo off of corridors falling apart at the seams. Bones and dust blow away. Bullets and rust here to stay. The camp in many ways is like a cycle of hopelessness whose final rotation culminates in annihilation. I realized very quickly that the key to survival in this place was to break from environmental inertia in whatever way I could. Variety no matter how minor, was intensely therapeutic since it allowed for me to picture a world beyond the one I was trapped in. I could actually dare to cling on to emotions whose intended recipient was hope. “Back to work!” a guard yells. A rifle smacks against the back of my skull as I collapse into that wet cold mud. I will get out here, I swear to God I will.
Bombs fall down like rain. Soldiers continue to march on. This war is not in vain. A peace verges on its dawn.
In lockstep, we raged against the bringers of death. Obedience acted as a mask for the 9th circle of hell that I had become. Betrayal isn’t a vice when you are doing it to the ugliest of people. Love thy neighbor isn’t a virtue when it becomes an excuse not to confront malevolence. Laughter and lies followed by evils time to die. As the dead soldiers body hits the ground, my plan for escape proceeds to immediately go down. Will I survive? Bullets alas, freedom at last? Steel rips through metal walled hellscapes, as screams and confusion seek to find me. As I run through fields of ash, a gush of blood erupts out of arm. I can’t stop… I must keep going….
As chapter I of the soul continues to read itself aloud, the perspective of the story shifts once more. My bloody body dissolves to ash only to be reconstituted as you. You’re in a forest, alone. Knowing that men wouldn’t allow you to participate in their bloody game, you had to forge your own path. Insanity, recklessness, and rage. None of this made sense and you knew it. “Why him?” you thought to yourself. The blade of your intellect melts like butter as you attempted to cut into the domain of the profound. It wasn’t meant for you to know.
As the sun goes down, the force of life transcends the clouds to God knows where. You’ve claimed your first soul on the battlefield. Guilt burns out of control as the dove of innocence lets out its final crow. “What have I done? What if he had a wife and kids? Connections which beautify and enrich the world grow from every person like roots from a tree. God only knows how much death now exists beneath the soil of this man”. Pain follows guilt as your conscience replaces the anger you had for the enemy with crushing empathy. As tears erupt from your face however, death flirts with becoming your fate. A boom in the forest. A rush of wind past your ear. The screams of your conscience in the blink of an eye becomes locked behind a door built of your own accord. You couldn’t afford to have a negotiation between destiny and the essence of the good in that moment.
Days flew by like seconds, as feelings ceased to animate you. It turns out time flys when moments become unshackled from the weight of emotion. The taking of a second life on day 2. Staying low on day 5. Talking with locals in the hope of learning more on day 11. It was all a mindless blur. A silent and erratic black and white film whose paradoxical genre was purposeful nihilism. Who knew such an expression of the human experience was possible? As the movie plays on however, splashes of color imprint themselves on the film reel of your subjectivity, bringing act II to an abrupt end. Erraticism slows to a trickle as our technicolored eyes first make contact over that field of ash. Horror erupts from your face as blood provides unwanted coloration to my body. A second gun shot zips by my face, nearly ending mutual possibility in the blink of an eye. “Run, you’re almost to the trees! Please Run!”. The crack of your rifle goes off towards the direction of the camp in desperation that it can buy the most precious commodity in the world, time.
Shot Number Three. Distant Screams. Salvation in the Trees. A Lifesaving Stream.
Piercing pain in the back of the leg creates a situation where I am allowed to be with you and stay. As my body falls to the ground and past the tree line, a mist of wood explodes out of the bark where my face had been moments before. Flashes of light erupt as life flirts with death. When existence flashed before the eyes, I saw things which had yet to be. Why was I able to see us in the coffee shop? How could a character in book number one of the soul see moments in a novel which had yet to be written? None of it makes sense. Maybe time is like a planet that rotates around the star of a God. As life which lives on this world, we are unable to see the fixed rotation of this planet so we perceive time as linear and by extension, ours to decide. Maybe time is like a chronology. A series of books were certain paragraphs are ours to write between lines which are destined to be. A river which allows our chaotic free will to navigate down its predetermined direction in whichever way we please. Whatever the explanation, I saw memories back then that had yet to be mine.
Memories and objective reality clash as flesh makes contact with impersonal earth. I am fading fast from shock as darkness consumes consciousness. The next several hours are but a blur, as the veil which covers my awareness parts for only the briefest of moments. Slowly being dragged through mud and dirt. A look of fear on your face. The visual of “stay with me” on your lips as words fail to make sound. Being in your arms as the river takes us away from what could’ve been the end. You followed through on what you said you were going to do. You quite literally saved me.
Broadcast signals from lifetimes ago start to weaken, as the tension between static and clarity struggle to speak into existence the finale of what we were. I see the back of a wedding dress followed by scenes from a high school graduation. The faces at that graduation seemed so clear, and yet I can’t make them out at all. I guess we weren’t meant to find them in this life? I begin to see your eyes as the signal further weakens, and we slip back into that coffeehouse. Exasperated tears erupt from the mountaintops of our faces, filling the atmosphere with a dizzying array of emotional resonances that include pain rooted in separation. Spiritual electrification in becoming one again. Anger from the depths of war trauma. Joyous gratitude from the gift of a second chance. But most of all, deep and unquestionable love. It is unconditionally there for you.
“It is unconditionally there for you too”. Noticing that I am in speechless awe of your words you say, “Spiritual connection allows for our emotions to be as loud as spoken expressions, and I can hear yours crystal clear. It’s… so strange to feel this way though. My soul recognizes its other half, but my mind doesn’t have enough memories to merge comfort and love into one. We are going to have to take things slow and I am going to need some time, if that’s okay”. Take all of the time you need; I am always going to be there for you.
Winter thaws into spring. Walls melt away with time. The birds come out to sing. Your essence is so sublime.
I love you.
