ResistedNormalcy

“Who I am.”

There is a fan belt breaking through its skin, a moth cutting through its chrysalis, and a fetus developing eyelashes in a womb. Wednesday. There are worms suckling sidewalks and men tripping switches in basements. We are standing here — in the middle of the day — thinking of who we are while atoms are exchanging their pulses and stars are erupting along the borders of the universe.

“I think it’s three things: how you see yourself, how you think others see you, and how others really see you.”

In a cleft palate, there is a nasal digestion of air. In the sand, there are stadiums full with crumbling shells. You unwrap your sandwich, and I block my eyes from the sun. There are shadows falling over us and waves of eyes needling through our skin. There are wars on other planets, and on Sunday a dying woman will kneel before a great altar made of wood. And we are standing here – thinking — complete of ignorance and knowing so. He is lifting his eyebrows and you are shaking your head. The soda machine punches out a can. Clink. Change, change, change.

“I don’t think how others see you is any indication of who you really are at all.”

But there is a semblance of a shudder and we are holding hands (invisibly) for the simplicity of comfort. Somewhere a child’s lungs are hemorrhaging, a spoon is bending in a kitchen, and we are here – thinking — about who we are.

“Yes it does.”

“No. If someone thinks something about me, that doesn’t necessarily make it true.”

“Sometimes.”

“…”

“Hitler was crazy. We see him as both evil and crazy. Do you think Hitler thought he was either of those? Of course not, but that was definitely a part of him, a part of who he was.”

An interminable spinning; the break of weightless bonds, the caterwaul of thought, the subterfuge of gods. And we are standing here, grounded, not able to see gravity but believing in it. And I am walking through and through my mind — around and back again because there must be something that I am missing.

There is this thrum of energy — the quintessence of everything, and I am falling somewhere in between (we are) and we’re trying to pinpoint that place. Give it identifiable borders, boundaries, come trembling to a membranous conclusion and the seedling of an answer.

But there isn’t one.

Filed under: Blather on June 7th, 2007