Obscure Emotions
The only person I know and love who has always had a genuine love for life, who never just endured it, but rather always lived with the joy and abandon that seems to many a thing of fiction, was diagnosed with a neurological disorder that is slowly erasing who he was, replacing him with a man he was not ready to be. An old man in a younger man's body.
He spent some time in denial. Begrudging acceptance was followed by internalized anger and depression that surfaced as anxiety and insomnia.
A calm, accepting exterior is belied by irrational hope in miracle cures peddled by soulless quacks.
Interactions with others are explicitly avoided and when inevitable, are followed by the fretful query, "Did I look normal?"
Normal. Those brief moments of feeling like his old self.
Most often limited to nighttime when he sleeps.
All of this could be, and was, borne with stoicism.
What could not, however, was having him respond affirmatively to the doctor's question: "Do you have thoughts that you would be better off dead?"
Or, overhearing him say he hates himself, his life, as it is now and the cure-less future that awaits, where dreams are dead and you awaken to a nightmare. Every. Single. Day.
These glimpses of feelings he hides beneath a shell of strength and optimism (or is it just silence), opened a flood of tears that were neither cathartic nor soothing.
I suppose they were cleansing as they washed away the masks we wore to protect each other and ourselves from a reality we can't bear to face....
Except I think the masks are back in place.
The Color of Summer
They say fireweed is Alaska’s clock and summer is almost over when its magenta blooms reach the top, winter sixty days away, a bittersweet thought. The sweet side of this is that it means we are in the best part of summer, the heart of it, long days that seem endless, days that embolden us to take an afternoon off, climb higher up the mountain, fish a little longer in the creek, or wander deeper into the forest. The sun lingers and alpine ponds become swimming pools, ridges familiar paths, and boulders transform into picnic benches. Remnants of early flowers indicate the season’s progression, while later blooms promise there’s still a little bit of fun left to be had.
The color of compassion
I see a tiny boy digging into his tiny pocket. He pulls out a coin which he places in the paper cup of a homeless man. This same tiny boy marches on down the street where he hears a steel drum, made out of tin cans, sending beautiful music to his tiny ears. Once again, he reaches into his tiny pocket and drops a shiny nickel on the ground next to the street musician.
The tiny boy knows he has only one copper penny left in his pocket. He saves it for tomorrow. His compassion is not tiny.
The Window
the color
of the window,
not the scenery behind it.
does anyone contemplate
what a window would look like
with nothing behind it?
the color
of the window,
not the house inside it.
does anyone contemplate
what a window would look like
if there was nothing inside it?
nothing outside or inside
no sides at all
just a glass wall
between nothing and nowhere.
what would you see?
the color
of the window.
The Color of My Thoughts
When I think, my thoughts are a certain color.
Do you know what color they are?
They aren't a color you can behold with your human eyes.
They are a color you can only feel with your soul.
Everyone knows that color.
Even you.
It's that color you see when you feel conflicted.
When you feel love and confusion and joy and sadness all at once.
When you are happy and excited with so much to say but no words come out.
It's the color of those words that don't come out; the words that swirl around in your head behind that smile on your face.
That color you sink into, curling up into a fetal position when no one is looking.
That color of your favorite song on repeat flooding your ears and brain, drowning out everything.
It's that same color that bathes you as you dance with ribbons and butterflies swirling all around you.
That color of the truth deep in your heart.
That color beckoning you to look up and keep going.
That color telling you to let all of your feelings burst out instead of hiding them.
That color of the emotional explosion of happiness, pain, anger, joy, sadness, love, thankfulness, forgiveness, salvation, and acceptance spilling out in a long, loud yell mixed with laughter and tears.
That color of freedom.
That color.