What We Shall See

I feel it now and my mind stops, fully alert. The slightest thing might cause it to disappear. Please, this time, let it linger. Let me take it inside. Give me a moment to turn all of my attention onto it. There's nothing more important. How long did it take me to learn that lesson? Allow me to measure every aspect of it so that I might remember it more clearly later. So that I can recall some tiny, pale version of the real thing. It's been too long. Let me stay here and bask in it, for old time's sake.

Unexpected, surprising always. It moves through me like a ghost. I know it will move on, but this time, this time, let it stay a bit longer.

Part of it must be carried on the rare shade of sunlight that only appears at odd instances. I can't be the only one that looks for this. But no one speaks of it, maybe for fear of losing the privilege of experiencing it. We wait, without knowing for what, and then when the moment comes, it's all obvious. Fleeting, but obvious, for only a moment. It seems longer but it's not. People don't talk about it. Does it happen to others? It must, it can't be only me. Maybe they're too busy to notice, maybe it scares them. Maybe others never feel this feeling. That tingle, that sense of pleasant displacement. Like you've walked into the wrong room by accident and seen something, wonderful, something forbidden, something not for you. You want to stay, to be invited in, to be accepted, to have the choice.

But it disappears, like a scent in the wind, and I'm left with an imperfect memory again.

I wait for it to happen again, I will it to happen again. I want so much for it to happen again, but I waste time and while I dither the images and feelings fade even more. Was this the last time it will come to me? More than a view, more than a memory. For the moment, I had shed my body and my mind and that space was all there was. So, so beautiful.

Now I'm left with only the sweet memory of the feeling, which slowly disintegrates to mundane life. A memory of a memory. A beloved song, lost, one note at a time. A picture that begins to slowly fade as soon as it is completed. Like a painting in the sunlight, the colors, once alive and vibrating with excitement, slowing to gray-scale, the outlines blurring, the background merging with the dull yellow hue that lies behind the rest of a moment-less life.

Think back, the last time I really remember the feeling, the sublime alignment of all my senses. What am I remembering or seeing? I think maybe, when I was around four years old. I remember standing on the grass, in the empty yard next to our house, alone. Facing south, facing the sun, eyes closed, the color was blood red-orange, the heat of a distant fusion engine on my face. A sun that shone only for me, I was perfectly still. Life moving all around me, but I'm alone, un-moving. Perfectly still. A breeze washing a hundred temperatures over me with each tick of the cosmic second-hand. Each small packet of air carrying its own aromas-- dirt, concrete, the green and brown grass, asphalt, damp laundry hanging on the taut clothes line, snapping in the breeze. Each smell made more vibrant and intense by the heat of my blazing star. A thousand sounds of different volumes, pitches and patterns rattling my ears and body. Each change of sense, an important and irreplaceable part of the world. My world. It may have been the last time I was not afraid.

I can remember it now. How could I ever forget and yet I did. I forgot it for years, decades. It was pushed out of my mind, taken from me. At first, crowded out of the center and later violently shoved into some corner by all the things I "learned" were more important. I forgot that wonderful feeling, the feeling of belonging where I stood. I was four years old and I owned that little piece of universe on which I stood. It was mine and on it, I was connected to everything else. I was four years old and there was no division between my mind and everything else.

After that, I began to catalog all the places I didn't belong. Everywhere else there was danger and the danger made me afraid. I learned to carry that fear with me, barely hidden. That's how you do it. You build walls and hide within, but even within my little redoubt, I doubted. I was afraid, and you can't own anything but your fear when you're afraid.

Let me remember that pleasant light a little longer, remembering when I had no fear. Let me feel that old sun, my old sun on my face and move that air through my senses one more time. I promise to take better care of the memory this time. I'll lock it away inside and only take it out when I need it. It's precious to me.

Here's a thought. Perhaps it's a glimpse of what I will see when I go back to where I came from, when I die. I could live with that, very comfortably.

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