Life.
At least, my life, should be filled mostly with silence and thought, broken only by moments of music, laughter, secret smiles, and occasional tears.
We find ourselves living in a world filled with constant noise and distraction.
I find myself in a videogame world turning off the background music and listening for the sounds that the game designers wanted me to hear fill our shared world.
I find myself lying in bed in the morning listening for the silence longing to live somewhere where there are no bullets. I find myself wishing I lived alone in a forest where the only noise is the soft creaking of old trees, the soft rush of running, falling water, the whisper of bird song filtering through the foliage and the murmur of my own breathing.
Here on the morning, there is a blessed silence unbroken even by the planes in the sky, the traffic so distant below, a neutral plane of existence somewhere in between the chaos of life below and the wonder of emptiness above.
It's a place where poetry can take place far, far away from the mess of emotions and the madness of consent. Finding an inner calm even man made music takes on a new form of being and I find myself contemplating the things that I would otherwise dismiss as too distracting to include in my regular thought process.
What things?
Dreams. Dreams of what I want to be, dreams of what I wanted to be, and dreams of what happened anyway in spite of me believing that life would be different somehow.
One dream I have, often in waking fashion, is the one where I am with my brother and all the things that continually drive us apart are absent and we could be what we never really were. Together we walk through the waking adventure as my mind constructs my own desire until I am reminded with the certain regret that it cannot ever be and then I find myself wishing that the dream would just find someone else to haunt while still being happy, somehow- that they still happen. It's hard to put it into words that capture what the idea of "sweet regret" actually is.
I dream of not being alone. That there is someone else there with me. I didn't ever have a significant other so it's not a memory- but more like a memory of a desire unfulfilled as I grow older and the pain has softened into an endurable loss as I long for a touch I have never felt but often imagined.
Again, how do you tell someone, that you look forward to that kind of feeling when you can't even really describe who you want to be with and yet the feeling is acute and sharp as if the whole experience is about to happen?
I stop to consider that once, when the world was newer to me and our cultural background could be ignored as readily as all the grief and problems that come with awareness and understanding of the world around us bring, back to an idea of innocence that was as insubstantial as the morning mist yet the only reality that so many children experience between the rush of puberty and parental interference creates. Which is to say (the long way around) youth. That we did not qualify anyone else save by how kind or unkind they were to us. When what they believed was unimportant since we were more interested in what they could pretend was more important and playable. when the kid who had the best imagination took the lead, not the most athletic or best looking or any of the anchors that drown us in modern life were less important or crucial to play than could my stick be a sword and could the imaginary become enough of a reality to fill the hours in between lunch and having to be home for a bath and or dinner.
I know that not all children are given this gift, but those who do, forget it all too soon if they had it at all. We like to think it existed before technology came to rob it away but the truth is closer to the truth that grownups and grownup problems took it away from us long before some box invade our collective realities.
Children should just be allowed to be children.
That is all.
Anywho, now life invades and I must march off to a grownup event filled with all the importance that is devoid of play.
and that is life according to Mike.
At least, my life, should be filled mostly with silence and thought, broken only by moments of music, laughter, secret smiles, and occasional tears.
We find ourselves living in a world filled with constant noise and distraction.
I find myself in a videogame world turning off the background music and listening for the sounds that the game designers wanted me to hear fill our shared world.
I find myself lying in bed in the morning listening for the silence longing to live somewhere where there are no bullets. I find myself wishing I lived alone in a forest where the only noise is the soft creaking of old trees, the soft rush of running, falling water, the whisper of bird song filtering through the foliage and the murmur of my own breathing.
Here on the morning, there is a blessed silence unbroken even by the planes in the sky, the traffic so distant below, a neutral plane of existence somewhere in between the chaos of life below and the wonder of emptiness above.
It's a place where poetry can take place far, far away from the mess of emotions and the madness of consent. Finding an inner calm even man made music takes on a new form of being and I find myself contemplating the things that I would otherwise dismiss as too distracting to include in my regular thought process.
What things?
Dreams. Dreams of what I want to be, dreams of what I wanted to be, and dreams of what happened anyway in spite of me believing that life would be different somehow.
One dream I have, often in waking fashion, is the one where I am with my brother and all the things that continually drive us apart are absent and we could be what we never really were. Together we walk through the waking adventure as my mind constructs my own desire until I am reminded with the certain regret that it cannot ever be and then I find myself wishing that the dream would just find someone else to haunt while still being happy, somehow- that they still happen. It's hard to put it into words that capture what the idea of "sweet regret" actually is.
I dream of not being alone. That there is someone else there with me. I didn't ever have a significant other so it's not a memory- but more like a memory of a desire unfulfilled as I grow older and the pain has softened into an endurable loss as I long for a touch I have never felt but often imagined.
Again, how do you tell someone, that you look forward to that kind of feeling when you can't even really describe who you want to be with and yet the feeling is acute and sharp as if the whole experience is about to happen?
I stop to consider that once, when the world was newer to me and our cultural background could be ignored as readily as all the grief and problems that come with awareness and understanding of the world around us bring, back to an idea of innocence that was as insubstantial as the morning mist yet the only reality that so many children experience between the rush of puberty and parental interference creates. Which is to say (the long way around) youth. That we did not qualify anyone else save by how kind or unkind they were to us. When what they believed was unimportant since we were more interested in what they could pretend was more important and playable. when the kid who had the best imagination took the lead, not the most athletic or best looking or any of the anchors that drown us in modern life were less important or crucial to play than could my stick be a sword and could the imaginary become enough of a reality to fill the hours in between lunch and having to be home for a bath and or dinner.
I know that not all children are given this gift, but those who do, forget it all too soon if they had it at all. We like to think it existed before technology came to rob it away but the truth is closer to the truth that grownups and grownup problems took it away from us long before some box invade our collective realities.
Children should just be allowed to be children.
That is all.
Anywho, now life invades and I must march off to a grownup event filled with all the importance that is devoid of play.
and that is life according to Mike.
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