Five Fourteen

If ever anything innovative entered our imagination

Dizzying displays of darkness daring to delve deep within us

Would we wrestle within it?

New is nervous. New never knows.

And anyway all anyone answers is always

“So? Someone sooner said something sillier, sexier, smarter”

Life loses luster learning limitations

Yet you yearn

Break Bonds! Be Big! Bully boring beyond its bounds!

Dull dies during displays of daring

Fortune favors the fearless, fun follows the free

Reforming regrets, we resolve:

We will wonder wider, wish wisely, warmly welcome all.

I Wonder

I wonder how much larger a rim is than the basketball it lands in.

That is to say, I wonder at what point it was determined the end goal of a game was challenging enough.

Each act has a threshold. The world is far more black and white than made for tv movies might wish you to believe. A light may be dimmed, but light is light, without qualifier. The threshold is darkness, pure and true.

Sometimes I will stand in the shower and pretend to cry. I shut my eyes tightly and clench my fists. As I let the water wash over my face I let out a small, stifled cry, the manifestation of a breath attempting to escape a restrained chest. Slowly I will lift one hand to my eyes to wipe away the water, but my face never dries.

I am willing to believe that each of us in unique. Unique means many things though. My car is unique from his, I might say. Unique how? Mine is blue, his black. Mine has a CD player, his has the distinct smell of cigarettes.

So how am I unique? Does my doppelganger exist, but with blue eyes? Does he like hiking? Is he a woman?

What if there is someone that shares every characteristic: here is our cd player, here is our smell of cigarettes. Must one of us fail and one succeed in order to maintain the cultural norm of uniqueness? Must my career path change to allow his to survive?

Sand

Driving through Sarasota, I almost begin to feel pity for those whose full foundations are stuck in the ground. Most buildings here base themselves with pillars of concrete, solid roots that seem to sprout from the asphalt parking lots, solid reflections of the abstract fears of the patrons of each business. The clientele of the earth-hugging establishments glare enviously upwards towards their loftier compatriots as my window passes by each panorama.

Walking along the beach at dusk, I think back to the stilted edifices as the shifting light makes the buildings’ pillars appear as legs, as if the buildings were simply resting and would, at any moment, get up and join our stroll. I point this out to my companion and she laughs, lecturing me on how anything as stiff and bulky would most certainly make a spectacle on the beach, slipping and sliding over the shifting sands. As we decide to turn back, I pause for a moment, and feel the sand beneath my toes and the waves lapping at my ankles. At that moment, I resolve:

I would rather face the insecurity and embarrassment of my choices and actions than remain motionless as the sands of my life shift around me.