I have remained here for far too long, becoming distracted by these white li(n)es demanding I scour for a deeper meaning. I’ve taken a sideways step in every direction I’m familiar. Down through the short trail that sends me back to a place where bitter air no longer hitches my breath and the sun no longer chars my skin. I’ve started down that narrow path that supported overgrown brush that tags your flesh and knots your hair whilst the milky fog wraps around your feet, camouflaging unsteady ground. I’ve even attempted every path in-between, though; I have not yet attempted to stand still. I have not yet stood where my feet first settled and my mind finally emptied. This, I thought, is where my story will begin.
At single digit age I couldn’t stand still to save my life. My mind constantly wandered like a directionless bird with no sense of home. Age ten I wanted to grow up faster. I wanted to stretch my legs like you could with laffy taffy; I wanted to be treated just as my elders were. Age thirteen and I wanted to avert sideways, to create my own flow, to dash into uncharted life where I knew adventure was gifted at every corner and memories were guaranteed.
Age fifteen and I wanted to lock those damn breaks and shift into reverse faster than those cards could flip over, before they could reveal their ugly side. Seventeen and it now seems as though I’ve crossed the line again, between what’s real and pretend. They say everything is screwed into place, that everything sits evenly, that everything is functional, that everything is textbook correct. Though, it just causes me to consider acting out a lead roll in a play as I obviously can sure wear a mask and dissociate from myself.
However, let’s just pause for a moment. Let’s give time to experience the world as it flies past us, because, in that moment, you become the only thing that’s standing still. The only thing stable in a world that tips and turns over itself.
There are no words. No song. No melody that fits this section of mind, this state of being unless you have witnessed it yourself. You could not possibly begin to understand. It’s ironic how much time I’m willing to attempt this act, versus the amount of pleasure I receive from it. There, I become stripped bare to the bone, nothing left to define me. There are no mistakes, there are no achievements, it is simply life. I’m tired of those who chose to wallow in their words, repeating day to day: “Life sucks!” - “Life is cruel.” - “Where’s the good life?” There is no such thing, let me tell you. Life has no definition, only the meaning you find when you chose to live in it.
I choose to venture out into untouched land, if you may say. Land that has had the pleasure to do as it pleases with little interference. Land that will attach to your soul and instill its secrets and stories. My eyes will shift between the easy darkness of a blank mind and the focusing clarity of a world beyond. Here, I let nature root me into the forever changing ground.
Some say you, yourself, are two; a soul and a brilliant mind. It is hard to differentiate between the two unless you have been given the chance to become a single one or other. Here, where I stand, I am the host to my soul. As I sit here, observing, quietly capturing true integrity, I am suddenly unchained from the mind that manages to restrain the positive and negative. But, here, where I am my soul, there is nothing in everything.
The sky is a display between shades of grey, its untouchable yet soothing mist clear coats my bare skin. Damp leaves cling to the bottoms of my shoes, curling up around the edges of cloth and rubber as if they never want me to leave. The bird that invisibly perches himself atop the highest tree seems to have no volume. He becomes not a noise, but an accent to a work of art. Trees cluster and scatter in no particular order, their branches wave and entwine around each other. Old oaks groan and creek as the wind pushes them onward. I glide through, around, atop, inside, and within infinity. Every sense awakened. My spine and skin take shape of a fallen log, a log that in death has brought life and once, in life, had brought death. Nothing seems to startle, as everything is now expected. Every feeling is now apparent in this moment. A slight curve of uneasy stiffness, an overwhelming sense of peace, the edacious knowledge filling my empty skull, everything is here, everything is now. This is the garden of point zero, the garden of your soul. At this point I am unsure of where I stand on the map, it does not seem to matter. A map is for those who seek direction, those who have not yet been taught to stand still.
It is as though the old oak trees have the most to say, the most to tell you about yourself. All those knots and thick branches each hold a story, every ring and every side of bark are all part of that deeper meaning. The wilted grass begins to succumb to the water on the ground as the mist turns into light rain. Ivy crawls up and around the base of every fallen log and at the base of every wide trunk. The sun and the moon hide behind the thick, sticky atmosphere as if they are proving this emptiness to be a part of something greater, not the ‘ugly side’ humans seem to believe.
My eyes are now closed, consumed by the darkness that shrouds my body. Though, I no longer see, not even the darkness, I begin to understand. There is no sight, not in this moment. Sight is but a myth.
Sounds dissipate around me, nothing left but the ring and pitch of silence. Slowly at first, then all at once I hear nothing. ‘Nothing’ is no longer a sound anymore, its vast space. A void.
Sound is but a myth.
The damp rain, the prickling sensation of the cold, the hard oak as my altar, and the grass tickling the tips of my fingertips fades away just as the rest. It all drains, flows out of my body until there is nothing left.
My sense of taste and smell are now gone too, nothing is left in their place. This ‘nothing’ seems reoccurring, correct, but I assure it is only something you must learn to understand.
I am now nothing. For years I have been taught to believe this was something of a social acceptance gone wrong, but I believe it’s something we lack. All senses have been erased; everything that made me human had been exorcised from my body. And in this moment of nothing, a brief second in time, I found myself. I found the deeper meaning, it’s nothing. It’s finding nothing in life and living for it, it’s you becoming one with your soul instead of your mind. Life has everything to offer, a greater purpose; we just have to learn to accept it in its most legitimate form.
We have to become nothing.
There, we will become everything…
