Prologue

When my mother was pregnant with me, she dreamed of giving birth to a baby white elephant with human toes. She interpreted it as a positive omen and afterward, explored ideas of enlightenment and Buddhist teachings. She planned to have a home birth, but her blood pressure became so extreme that my actual birth occurred in some white walled artificial room in a hospital in Commerce, Georgia. It was a short labor; I was ready to come out. She said I flew out like a bird but also leapt out like a frog. My baby legs were springy, curled up and ready to jump, while the blond fuzz atop my head stood up “like a little chickadee”, she says.

May 2013

We, whatever we are, as collective and individual consciousness, as entities and thoughts of things and places and others, have pathways. We have streams of ideas and plans, feelings and experiences. Often they overlap, sometimes in many folds. They step on one another in space and time. They parallel and wrap around the universe in Mobius strips like ribbons of memory. All things potential and impossible fall on themselves and it creates an awakening in our dimension. Present awareness is heightened. The ideas of time and place seem to quiver in existence and their reality is questioned. My whole life I experience this awakening, this reminder, this tap on the shoulder from the universe. But only today have I realized that searching for the meaning of it is irrelevant. It is just there. My presence is more relevant than anything else. Déjà vu is just a byproduct of existing as an egotistic being.

 

Things are no longer bad or good. These words are useless in describing what now has taken priority in my reality. I simply exist and instead of bad or good, I can only use ideas and emotions to show where I am. Only through art, expression, and conversation can I create a picture of myself and my experiences that can be received by others in some sort of tangible, digestible way.

 

A girl I hardly know told me, "You must be so strong." She was staring up at a wall. It was covered in notes, quotes and pieces of prose; photos, some of me, most of a small blond boy and his family; a calendar gifted from me, and receipts for enormous purchases at bicycle shops. "But of course you know that," she whispered with a voice that I interpreted as reflecting jealousy and intrigue. She continued, "He's in a better place now, though.” Another pause. "But of course you know that, too…"

     She stood up, left the room, and I continued to stare into the closet. Straight into the death portal, where he had sat and meditated on those round cushions that Ann had made him.

It is almost as if I have done this before, but not in this life. Certainly not. This change in my world, this sudden loss, this unexpected alteration to the universe, has made me question everything. Now I could lay nude in my bed for hours, staring across my room while I lightly brush the inside of my thigh with my finger, tricking my body and imagining his lips there instead. At first I wonder if it's odd or in some sort of bad taste to think in this way about someone deceased. Someone whose lips are now ash and whose arms, once carrying veins that circulated surely the most fiery vital flow of any person I have encountered, now has vanished into the cosmos and, of which any physical trace of may be left, is resting inside a vessel encased in a velvet drawstring pouch which sits on an altar somewhere.

 

If there's anything I have learned the past two weeks, it is that time is an illusion. Now isn't that a paradoxical statement?

I have constant exhaustion and brain fog, but colors are more vivid and sounds ring sharper in my ears. Each bite of food holds more significance while Facebook posts are empty and leave me feeling antipathetic. There are only two things that still seem to remain the same. First, I continue to impress myself with the level of strength I have. Second, I am just as lonesome as before. I crave distraction and communication with someone who cares to listen, while the need to be alone with my thoughts runs simultaneously.

     The only compromise is sleep, when I may escape these clashing desires.

All my tears have been drained; my reserves are dry. Now only the pumping organ inside my chest resounds with pain that I cannot describe.

     

However, the following account is not about him. It is only through great loss that we may find great gain, a kind of transformative release that hurts even as it frees.

This is my perspective of a time of immense change in our world--- change which is still occurring and has results which we can never imagine until they manifest. It is the choice point.

I have found many connections in my journey so far. Many images, ideas, stories, reminders, memories, and energies have consistently made themselves visible to me in a way that cannot be forgotten. As a human feel the need to seek their meaning, their origin. I attempt to manifest some sort of purpose for which I believe they exist. But only through acceptance of the fact that their meaning may not be of importance, can I find the real answer, an answer with a question that I still do not know how to ask.

            That is why I start with the simplicity of the déjà vu. If be there not meaning, there are at least lessons. And I would like to believe that no lesson exists without purpose.