I find myself staring at a blank ceiling as I often do, hoping words will appear in the blank spaces between the peaks and valleys of the shitty “popcorn” paint that scrapes my knuckle every time I stretch too far above my head in the morning. I can visualize letters fading into view, a dull grey against the off white color stained by years of simply existing. I wonder how much of that off white color is me. Pieces of my body, my cells, my breath, staining the world around me. I wonder how much of my existence stains the world I live in. How much do I color your vision of me. Perhaps I'll never know. What I do know, is that the off-white eggshell color I stare at every morning when I wake up, or every morning I can't sleep, is the exact color I imagine my body will be one day when it's all broken down by the Earth and the things living in it. I see an empty vessel in a shroud, sunken into the ground by months of sullen rains, deep thundering storms that I'll never get to experience. Then I remember, the fact that I'm here now, the world experiencing itself for perhaps the only time, the first time, the last time all at once, means that the storm I'll never have the delight of enjoying is indeed me as well. My Self seeing and yet existing as the very thing sinking its past physical form into the ground. Rivers overflowing, fires ignited by the strike of lightning in the wrong place- or perhaps the right one. These all exist as Me. A tsunami caused across the world from the flap of a butterfly's wings, an earthquake shattering entire countries, a deep, rumbling abyss, spewing forth molten rock, able to consume even the most impervious materials. We are pieces of all of this. Yet, at the same time, we are the birth of a fawn, wobbling legs and heaving breaths seeing it's first image of the world, of itself. The knowledge of life, a new plant springs forth from the ground and completes what some would consider a circle. A triangle has a more preferable shape and shows much more promise. A beginning, a middle, an end. Yet, all the same size, the same length, and can change at the whim of time. The most fickle and yet painful endeavor may be capturing the passage of time. Something that can be understood by all in different ways whether it be the sun, the weather, the usage of what some would consider comfort items like clocks- yet I often hear some say that humans are the only ones capable of making this discernment. Birds travel for the winter, mammals hibernate, humans continue along their lives in an attempt to make it as meaningful as possible. Will someone remember you when you die? Do the birds that travel, the mammals that sleep, have the same concern? Will it matter what's remembered or whom it's remembered by? If a legacy is left that tells a dark story, will it matter as much? If we make an outstanding difference in one life, or a small difference in many, is it of the same consequence? Yet my bottle, the form that keeps me here in this physical plane of existence will rot one day, story or no. The shroud heavy across my body, will sink, as will my flesh, into holes which were once what made me who I once was to most who knew me. When the new babe is born, the new plant is sprouted, I can only hope that what kept me here was sustenance to promote their continuance of the Earth. I hope, if I was ever part of something cosmic, that I will return yet again to experience myself through the eyes of something else. Or perhaps, I'll have no eyes at all. That will be okay, because I will have given every fiber of my physical self to this Earth I call home, and whomever, or whatever I am, I will know someday that the time that I have spent being tethered here was a worthwhile one. I will know that We have all done everything possible to provide for the next iteration.
