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2117


Aurorae


His words shrill with an immodest glee and feigns disbelief, acting for our mutual enjoyment. His voice crackles on the other side of the phone. There is a darkness that surrounds us, that he may not recognize... Things may not go the way he wants. Or the way I want. And the pretense of my altruism in our conversation surrounds my heart, a serrated fanged maw of integrity effortlessly threatening my deepest insecurities: that I may be found by both him and myself that I'm a fraud. But for this moment, there is an excitement that hasn't penetrated the bleak of existence since ... I don't know when. Maybe a few days. Maybe a few years. But for him, he's feeling it again now.
      I am calling a Marine with an opportunity. For the rest of the world, there are several facets we can interpret this through, most cynical. That I'm culpriting his aspirations to fulfill the goals of an insatiable, mechanical gorge that is our government. That I'm a peon trying to make a mission. That I am a guy, selling a product, to a guy willing to buy.
      But for this moment, I am entering a bliss with him. Because all I believe I want to do is help people. And I'm helping.
      There is an opportunity he never thought was possible. He was generally interested in joining the reserves before, maybe later if he can work it into his schedule. And we both know that means he's not committed enough for this to work out the way it'd need to work out. But now he can retrain into what he's always wanted to do. Get paid doing it. Get paid well. Catapult him into a career in the civilian world he is excited about. And the fear that maybe it won't work out and he'll be disappointed- that's what is scaring me into thinking that I may be some kind of horrible person.
      I explain to him again- and I know that my own fears are irrelevant, that the hoopla of what could be said about this transaction is all nonsensical bullshit for a day when I'm wanting to beat myself up. He knows that it may not work out... But he's still so excited, and won't stop asking questions to which I give honest and accurate answers. He hangs on the words...
      And for this moment, the guy is hearing something that makes him whisper back genuine felicity. And what could be a greater gift, short of love?

Sometimes, I see a scene at Walmart, when I am frustrated in the ways appropriate to that business. I am surrounded by fools, ingrates, and aloofs who are so absentminded they become mischievous obstacles to my very simple intentions to buy innocuous products at reasonable prices and get on with my damn life. I am third in line, behind some other disaffected entities- college students, elitests, or maybe ailing grandmothers- who will be just as enveloped in their acrimony of duress, that they are being subjected to this nonsense, they become foreboding impassible shadows themselves. And I grit my teeth, watching her: the girl at the front of the line, dealing with the antisocial cashier, who is either incompetent, misanthropic, or both.
      This girl at the front is fumbling about... I have no idea with what. It's Walmart for @%#$'s sake. You pick it up, you pay for it, you step out. What's the problem? But her distress hits me... She is being choked by the animus that surrounds her, just for existing in this place. Checking over her shoulders, she sees we're pissed at her. Just for being here, there is so much more gravity to every miniscule decision she could make. And what's going on in her head? From what is this glare I'm unduly giving her distracting, that could- should- be the greater import in her life?
      Rat stew. (Inside joke: A thing where I see someone who is upsetting me, and I realize I don't know what their life story is. What if this girl has to go home to a horrible situation, that I won't exaggerate too much on, other than that it culminates to the poor thing having to make a thankless meal of boot and rat stew to get by with her miserable life?)
      She is a lonely victim of circumstance. And I feel that bliss... And I smile that genuine smile. It's Walmart, for God's sake. Midday, and we're all trying to get somewhere with our lives. Nothing else matters in this world except this girl and I. Who may be a bumbling dolt, a shivering child, a distracted woman, any many of combinations that just further define another breathing, feeling, bleeding human being that is a carapace of emotions. Real emotions. She doesn't deserve any of this negativity over something as simple as having a little trouble with her groceries at the waning of her day.
      She looks over at me, and I tilt my head and widen my smile as to say, 'What can ya do? Another crazy day.' And I chuckle it off.
      "I'm so sorry," she mouths to me.
      "You're fine, hon. Take your time."
      She blushes a thankful smile of her own, and gets on with her day.
      And for the rest of my time at Walmart, I smile and make a joke of the situation we're in. Because for that moment, I saw the relief of a suffering, no matter how trivial it may've been in the end. But what could be a greater gift, short of love?

The day was hot and humid, and its after effects into the night are blistering warm, incubating our little city of a thousand cities in a greenhouse between pavement and clouds. But I'm actually pretty okay. I've never been one to freak out about weather, and, while it may be a little inane to chalk it up to my heritage, I'd like to believe the blood of my ancestors and their lands makes me a little immune to each of their own unique climates. The snow on the plains, the sweltering simoons of the deserts, the torrential battering of wind, rain, thunder, and earth- the chieftains, queens, and nomads of the past navigated them with an acceptance that I feel in the back of my mind that welcomes the impunity of the world with amicability.
      The sky overhead is dark, and it's very late. I shouldn't be coming home this late. But I am a workaholic and I do enjoy it with a bushido martyrdom that I don't deny gives me some masochistic (and altruistic) thrill. And as the tiny drips slip down the back of my shirt, I am reminded of a lonely child, walking dark streets, alone, and knowing he should be afraid as the rain comes. Or upset. Abandoned, neglected, so on. But whatever to all that. There was an electricity in the air. There is an electricity in the air.
      Lightning crackles and the thunder reaches me, it's bass riveting through my arteries and veins, stroking my heart. And the heavens break under the weight of the waters it carries, and the storm pours on me as I'm walking to my car parked too far from the office. I'm soaked in moments, and I burst into a run. There is no fear in me, though. No upset. No detriment.
      No, this is a blessing. Something I've missed for so long. When the tornadoes came that leveled parts of Ohio when I was twelve, I stepped out into the black and grey backyard, looking up as the wind threatened to carry me away, and I cracked an idiot's grin. When flashes of light lanced the earth around the peaks of my California valleys, when the monsoon flooded my Jakarta gardens, when the hail fell in Texas for the first time in a long time in my San Angelo tin car-roofs, I was witness with a close hand view of the beauty that our world can produce.
      I have been blessed with holding a close, ailing friend's hand while driving by and stopping next to an idyllic field of tall green grass. I have been graced with a picture I took with my camera as the sun set between branches of a tree arching my sidewalk, painting the world in gold, crimson, and azure. I have felt the peace Terra can bring, in all its shades of vermilion, emerald, violet, cyan, and rose.
      And I have felt her black and white, glee and passion, like in this storm. And sloshing through puddles and crashing through the curtain of water that blanketed me in shimmers of glittering discharge- I feel home in the inclement. I feel lost in the inclement. I feel alive in the inclement, breaching the car door, exhaling, suffocating in my laughter as my night climaxes into a short lived tempest that brings me back to my most base, shamanistic instincts. The animal that was my people of the past...
      And for a few moments, I'm reveling in the power of God in nature- the blood of the spirits of old- and I become one with absolute glory. And what could be a greater gift, short of love?

When I see people lately, I felt threatened and intimidated. I keep thinking I should be more. Or less. Like I'm doing it all wrong. Like I'm missing out. I am far too preoccupied with the fact that I don't know what 'right' is as a definition, in this sentence that "I don't know if I'm doing it right", that I don't even realize how opaquely STUPID this whole thing is. I'm alive, right? Why can't I just live...
      I know I've written a poem about that a little bit ago, haven't I?
      Sometimes, though, all this subsides, and it's most obvious to me when I'm completely taken from myself into someone else. On my way home, a car pulls up next to me at a long red light, beckons me to pull down my window. She needs to know where a place is, and although I've only been here a little bit, I actually know what she's talking about. I tell her that when the light changes green, I'll let her pass me into my lane so she can make a quick U-turn; follow down a few lights, to pass under a bridge and go to a big intersection. "Take a left and you'll see it on your right."
      "You think it'll be alright?" she looks at the long line of cars behind me.
      "If they honk at me, they honk at me. You'll be fine." And I smile.
      There is so much in this world that is just... beautiful. Kindness. Forgiveness. The world itself. There is an unlimited amount of beauty, and it all lies in the perception of our hearts.
      I think the point is ultimately, as has been noted before, "Greatest of these is Love." To love is the apex of beauty, bliss, and Good. When we are rejected, when we hurt each other out of honesty, when we help those in need, when we share, when we stop to take in the bellisimic panorama, when we hold each other dear in traumatic tears, when we choose not to express anything other than kindness...
      I can't help but smile at the these thoughts, just like when in practice. It's love.
      What could be a greater gift than love?

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