I need to write. I neglect it, an honest process I need to have with myself every day that I always manage to forget or push aside as something just as easily done tomorrow as well is would have been done today. But then I miss details, details of my self, and of the world around me, of my thoughts and dreams, of all, certainly, that matters so much more than the vacuous details of these things that I just did. If my day were a world, what I did (wake up at 9, eat lunch at 1, study for class, exercise, practice oboe) would be the core, necessary but not exciting, heavy but static. What is important are the trees, the life, the rivers and waterfalls and sunflowers and birds, the rain and sun and throbbing forests that blanket the crust, the core, those things – life! – are what give beauty to the day, purpose to the routine, the very lifeline of what I mean when I write in this journal emphatically that “Yes! Today I existed!” And here is why. It is not because I checked events off my calendar, one two three I wake and then I sleep to do it all again tomorrow one two three I wake and then sleep to do it all again tomorrow do you feel accomplished because it has been 364 days of one two three you woke and then slept and tomorrow will be 365 and do you feel successful, with 365 wakes and sleeps and one two three sometimes, of course, a four?
It is because I smelled the rich roasting lamb wafting from the halal food truck on K street at lunchtime, because I walked over plywood boards serving as sidewalk while new cement is being poured (sandy grainy grating cement not warmed by the summer sun) and the hollow cold round navy sound of my weight (128 pounds) on a hollow area ceiled by plywood is suddenly (in that moment) the answer to the universe, do you hear it? Life echoing from each step you take here? It’s from the way the sun softly sets (evening sun, smudged and secret) behind the George Washington University hospital secreting pink memories that glow with warmth as she says goodbye to the day, I will see you tomorrow but I will be different, I will paint the sky with my warmth but it will never look the same, as it does in this moment, I am here (I will always be here) but I am never the same because I, too, the Sun, check days off my calendar, one two three I wake (I wake you) and I sleep (I am your first lullaby) and do it all again tomorrow too.
This is the true day, the honest day, the naked day – the smells the sounds the colors the whispers the slight perpetual nibble on the ear of your sensory soul, the beginning of a day, warm and deep and full of potential and you consent yes, you have agreed as a prerequisite of being human that you will experience it, that you will commune with the pleasure beyond breathing beyond heartbeat the day rises and you rise with it, stroking its back and exploring its secret crevices, dancing with it as it writhes into its fullest being, rising rising rising throbbing growing with you and for you and it thrusts meaning into your darkest most secret spaces as you stroke its spine (slowly, gently, but always with purpose why am I here what do I mean who are you and because of that who am I) do you like the caress (the answer will come if you just slowly) slowly explore as we rise together, climb together, the day has grown beyond itself and you within it and with throbbing passion it climaxes, thrusting its last passionate shaft of sensory immersion as deeply into you as humanity and time will allow and you gasp as you find the truest part of yourself rising rising r-i-s-i-n-g! and together you sigh, you and the day, sweating and exhausted but you have found the answer gasping for breath who are you? it whispers in a rattling breath as it exits slowly and you know now to answer only “I am the day” as it ends and you embrace slowly the knowledge that you are not one two three sleep and repeat but that you are the smells and the sounds and the tactile experiences of the world that is only you.
Traveler at the Edge 