In high school, I once had an assignment in my Creative Writing class to write a description of myself in a scenario of my own choosing.
I believe I was sixteen, maybe seventeen years old. I remember that I envisioned my face and body standing on a beach, gazing upon a sunset as the waves lapped at my feet. What I remember most is that my feet, the waves, the tiny shells in the surf, the sunset as it transitioned from yellow to pink, all grasped my mind and became a part of who I was at that moment in my life. I wasn't a man, I was a being. I was just me. Nothing more, nothing less. There was no past, there was no future, there was only the now as the foam dissipated between my toes.
What I can't imagine is my face and how my face reflected who I was at that moment. I can only imagine that who I was then is the reason that I can now picture that sunset. Despite my worries... the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that I faced then and the horrors in my mind, escaped me but the fears of rejection overtook me like a posse of Arizona cops stopping a work van at the El Paso border.
I never see my face in my own foibles. I picture the faces of those charged with petty crimes attached to my body. Many times... No, most every time, I feel obligated to apologize to the face attached to my body. Other times, I feel obligated to apologize to the body attached to my face.
Fuck it, man. That sunset that defined me segregated me from my own existence. Even as another soul gazed upon my sunset as a sunrise a world away, I was oblivious to a life lived in tandem with my own based upon the simple rising and setting of the sun.
A man, woman or child a world away from me gazed upon sun and shared hope that we all share hours before I awoke from a wet dream. And, although I will not elaborate on the wet dream aspect of the connection, we all awoke with with basically the same ideas...
Ok. even I realize that what i'm writing is difficult to grasp ... but what I'm asking you to ponder isn't....
Think. Remember. Youth isn't lost, youth is buried with an 'X' marking the spot. Who you are isn't defined by who you are percieved to be and who you are meant to be isn't defined by what you've been taught.
Think back to those assignments in High School or college or junior college thhat required you to express yourself. Remember how you felt as you expressed yourself despite the fear of ridicule.
That was who you are. That is who you are. That is what makes you worthy. That is what makes you capable of changing this fucked-up world we live in.
This blog is disjointed but this blog is coherent. After all, if you can be you, and we can be individuals, than we can exist as one.
I'm craving low-salt peanuts/
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