The apartment is quiet. So quiet… so I’m taking this opportunity to write a little bit. Bear with me, it probably won’t make sense. I wish I could say I learned much from my self-imposed silence. The truth is I have barely had the time to write anything– and my thoughts seem more muddled than they have ever been.
I have plunged myself headlong into the world of escapism, of putting off things for another day. The other day, I learned that a cheetah can change his/her direction mid-leap. What a nifty skill to have. I suppose that being the fastest land-animal does that to you– one evolves and adapts to make up for a gift that can also be a fatal flaw. It makes me wonder that if we humans can also evolve like this– that the things that make us so terribly strong can make us so terribly vulnerable as well– our hearts, our intelligence come with their own fail-safes. Or perhaps– that is why one has both.
I could use a change in direction.
It is high summer here. The air has that redolent feel to it, calling for siestas and slumber, of dreaming. Outside my windows, tan, leggy Californians speak in rolling Spanish, much like their gait. I envy their purpose, their momentum towards their own unseen dreams. Me– my dreams are vague things, snatches of what could have been and of how things use to be.
My existence is so different now, so alien, so uncertain. My parents came by to visit– and their familiarity comforts me more now. More than when I left them to explore my roots, more than when I took my time in the snowy slumbering town of South Hadley as a college student. Funny how that is.
Perhaps the only thing I have learned is this: our mortality holds our hand everyday of our lives. I know this, because the girl next door to us, one of those proto-Californians, Blondie, with bleached hair, sexy curves, and requisite skin art is slowly wasting away– most days she is too weak to carry her own groceries. I know this because the family across the way is shattered because of a careless driver cutting off their car on the freeway– leaving shattered bones, shattered hearts, shattered lives. I know this, because I lost one of my own, my aunt– who also slowly wasted away from a mysterious disease that turned her body weak and paralyzed like stone. She could’ve encountered a Gorgon for all we know, so little did we know about her illness.
And like everything and everyone that deigns to stay close to us– Mortality is a great teacher. It tugs on your hand and nudges you with an elbow and says Look. There is that little boy relearning to walk again– turning his metal walker into an imaginary race care or spaceship, enthusiasm barely dampened. There is Blondie, reconnecting with her mother after so long. And there is your aunt, leaving her prison of a body to embark on some new adventure. Look.
