Truth
1) Remember. Attempt to recall the contingencies of your animateness. Who were you? Did the dandelions growing in the cracks of a particular sidewalk give your ghostly presence any nostalgia, or did the sign that displays a faded 1999? Did the faded baseball cap perched languidly atop those boxes make your heart hasten its resounding beat? The idiosyncrasies of your character are crucial to ascertaining any facts about your concrete personage.
2) Reflect. Once you have adequately fabricated a vision of your obsolete self, force your mind to delve into each aspect of your being more diligently. What is it, exactly, in your past that is holding you back? What is the source of the lingering regret that chains you to your phenomenal existence? Are the chains commenced by the woman stooping above a gravestone (your gravestone?), the neglected manuscript stretched over your granite kitchen counter, or even the timorously wilted perennials whose vigor you undertook? Does the charmingly anachronistic portrait of burgeoning Claude Monet posing with a digital camera have any significance?
3) Resonate. Find peace. This instruction is the vaguest and briefest, for it means different things for different entities. You could take it as simply putting to rest the leeching vices dormant in your mind (discussed in instruction 1).
08.17.2024. Grey Area Challenge (What do you say to a spirit stuck in limbo?).
Gray
I find myself
stuck all day
the sun may shine
but i see gray;
there are no colors
there's barely light
darkness surrounds
although it's not night;
heavy and slow
i drag around
air so heavy
i feel i may drown,
in tears like rain
that blurs and clouds
grayscale watercolor
that cloaks and shrouds,
hides yellows, greens and blues,
holds reds and oranges at bay
no purples, no pinks, no joyful hues,
forever and always, only gray.
In the Microscope
We looked closely...
having struck dynamo
an excitement scientific
among all the laboratorian
Aha...finally! a spirit
stuck...
in slide!!
an authentic sampling
cross section, aye
between glass
its parts wriggling
and jiggling
we see turning around
as little space allows
for what seem
like hands
face, feet!
a nose it has
elbows and
it kneels
it kneels!
deaf and mute
and we are also
in the microscope
gapping...
dumbstruck
09.17.2024
Grey area challenge @AJAY9979
use your limbs, try to suck the stickiness out of existence
Being stuck is the natural state of spirits. Being caught in a web, or tangled while attempting to spin one, nothing could be more natural in the world than stickiness. Limbo, limb, a limb is a limb, like a leg or claw or branch reaching towards the light. A spirit stuck in limbo is like a limb stuck in a spider's web, trying to free itself.
Human limbs free themselves easily from spider webs - they barely even feel the silk that took such effort to spin into shapes. But smaller limbs, like the skeletal delicate legs of an ant, they remain stuck until the spirit leaves them, the spider sucks them dry.
The world can suck a human spirit dry; and usually the ones doing said sucking aren't attempting to gain sustenance the way a spider is. The other humans can keep a spirit stuck in limbo for days, weeks, months, waiting to hear back, to obtain the currency that keep people able to obtain food in ways less visceral and traumatizing than how spiders obtain their food.
A spirit stuck in limbo is waiting, the way a worm waits on the sidewalk as it dries in the sun, having left the dirt during a rainstorm. A human spirit left waiting has an advantage to that worm - it knows what concrete is, what the sun will do if the spirit fails to move. Being stuck isn't always a choice, but one has choices to make while waiting, while stuck, while unsure and insecure of their place in the world of people. Stay in the shade, nurture limbo the way the sun nurtures limbs, branches of a tree reaching towards it - there are free resources for spirits stuck if one knows where to look. Libraries are brilliant ways to keep one's mind intact while waiting for a more fulfilling pastime. Prose, writing, that's how this spirit keeps afloat while in limbo.
Through the Gray
I see you lurking in my dreams
Stuck between, neither here nor there
What is it you need?
What question should I heed?
What do I say to send you on your way?
You seem so sad, even a bit mad.
Behind grey fog, no, maybe even smog
Broken, of course, you could not stay
You did not need to go
I forgive you, you know
For all the reasons you thought were good
For actions beyond your iron control
For the hurts and pain
And your total distain
Because you are not who once you were
Go! Peace be with you
You’ve earned the right to respect this life
And if by chance our souls should meet once more
I’ll love you still
I always will
Seeing Through Thee
i’m seeing through these eyes that appeared to be
appeared to me appear to know
which way I go and you alongside
climbing whatever you have settled for
liberation doesn’t bother you
whatever you’re settled with
liberation don’t bother me
you are there
you are settled
with you there i be
with that’s who you are
that’s who I am
you cad you sod
may your journey be easeful as you allow
(meaning it won’t be at all)
not overly painful
and even your great grasping
your simple ungrasping
may it bring succor
to the same mysterious process
in all