Evergreen
I sit down in front of you. Silence is especially dramatic when you are creating it. There is something about your manners, the way you look into my eyes, like you are constantly trying to remember my name — not my given name or artistic name — the name my soul was given by the one that brought me into this ephemeral eternal fabric of time.
You are a soul searcher, always trying to find meaning and purpose into every little thing happening, every single word spoken, every heartbeat that you notice when you concentrate under water. There is a kindness in your eyes, as you stare me down, silent, like you are weighting every fiber of your being in order to be present in the moment. Nothing can distract you, even if you should not even be focused in what you are at any given moment.
And then you glimpse into it, the soul you were searching. That’s when you try to convey some reality. You quote Hopkins, “As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame”. You light a cigarette. You wait. “I’m really sorry I made you feel this way”. There is some truth to it.
When you are not writing a character’s perspective and action based on your own, it can take you by surprise and by the hand into an evergreen clarity.
What does it mean to be as trees in a world that fells the forest?
“I killed myself. How can I keep on living knowing that?” You just got to push harder than others. Got to try harder, effort more, give all. Surrender is a way to be confident, another form of pride. An ability to lean in, to rise above, to think beyond.
I don’t know if I believe in life after death. And this is precisely the reason why I try to keep living to the best of my ability the simple life I was given. I did not ask to come. I did not try to survive my heart disease. I did not save myself from my own suicide attempt. I’ve been living carelessly but thoughtfully. The meaning of surrender is to stand tall while allowing yourself to lean. Kindness is something you learn, you act upon, it’s unnatural, and yet, the only meaningful human deed.
The answer is no.
It did not feel like I was living my own life after I left, but then I also left because that did not feel like I was living my own life in there either. It had been my life forever and it literally saved me and got me through my suicide attempt. But when I chose to leave, it was because I could not conciliate the way I believed and who I was in my orientation with what the religion is. So, I left because I did not feel like myself in there anymore, and then I spent the last two years experimenting and trying things to build a real truest self. I was mostly mistaken but experiment is experience. I know now things that are definitely not myself and finally started to acknowledge who I actually am a while ago. It’s been a few months since I got a glimpse of an honest self in the horizon. What I actually like, what I dislike, what I want for my life, what is important, and whatever more. And I know this goes a little bit against what I told you about trying things, but hey, sorry for that. It is odd that the search for realizing your true self is so much simpler than any version we come up with. And yet it is a constant search. I’m starting to feel like myself lately, and that is why I’m trying to revisit some relationships I left behind, to figure out which ones are actually part of my true self and which ones are not. It feels honest if not vulnerable enough.
“Do you see the wind blow?”, I asked.
“No, that’s why I have curtains.”, you said.
“And the way the light catches it is something unbelievable.”, they said.
What does it mean to be alive in a life that fails death?
