Flotation Devices
Imaginative. I desire to be it always. Air, whims, flotation devices made of feathers and down - given, not stolen, from majestic birds that soar. I want to soar, too, to be angelic in appearance, in doing and being, knowing no weight to bear. Creativity may not beseech me of its threatened disappearance because it knows no bounds, no laws. It cannot be said that it will dissipate if not used or spoken to. I guess it may, but I refuse to engage in it at its haste. I hate to think one could lose such a humanistic talent.
My heart and soul, my being, transcend membrane adhesions, adapted to trap and confine in search of comfort. Comfort - another permeable concept, which slips through any physical trap with viscosity. This world of forms is conceptualized by human language - I don’t believe something so transient in its meaning.
It’s winter time, and I miss New York City - the city of dreams. If I squint the cones and rods through which I see, I am there. I am at a cafe in the West Village as the leaves change and taxis swish across puddles of rain. Classical melodies create waves woven into time and space, helping me to romanticize my existence. Nearby, an NYU grad student and a poet grapple over beatniks and Buddhism - breaking ground and shattering preconceived notions they held in philosophy and the meaning of it all. Grasping an eclectic handmade mug, I sip Bhakti (meaning devotion) Chai, artisanally crafted from ginger and spices at its origin in Boulder, Colorado. It tastes like curiosity, charm, and creativity - the indian meaning of the word. Things have meaning if you give to them.
My permeable reality allows me to transport to Boulder, to the little Trident Cafe off Pearl Street. Its old wood tables, chairs, and floors encapsulate the energies of ghosts who passed by on their way to work, to school, to break up with someone, or to express their love. Fingers turn the pages of novels, imaginations wound into words, letters expressed, page by page - line by line - another way to pass the time. A few years ago, I auditioned as a yoga instructor for the first time at a local studio a few shops down the way. As snow twinkles lightly outside, this woman with moxie bounces across the oak. Her face, flushed from fallen flakes, makes acquaintance with my memory, my recollection of time. Her presence illuminated her true yogi. When she showed up at the audition, authenticity in her being and doing clearly united on one front. I could tell she lived the way she taught, thus being the way she led others to be and do.
Shoes glide across tracks of crunchy, white fluff. When I burst through my home’s doors into warmth, I realize I do not know “home.” I cannot remember the last place I deemed to be home; no house, no town, no alignment, and few entrapments set.
I float freely, I permeate, I flow right into the pages I read: this time on Thailand. Yellow, bright, sun rays pass through my porous skin - baking me from the outside in like the fresh sourdough bread I ate for breakfast while overlooking the cliffs colliding with the Pacific. Energy skims the water’s surface to connect beings, doings, and landmasses. Every day, my neuropathways wire in new ways - these electrical circuits of neurons colliding to forge au courant grooves in brain matter. Meditation, breathwork, and yoga for three hours every morning for 35 days. Little did I know I’d reemerge anew.
We always do - every day. Time passes; however, we do not witness time itself - it is only an illusion. We witness the now, the moment, the present. When I look in the mirror, I see the sands of time beginning to imprint their whereabouts, but I do not see time itself. I only see the now. A picture or memory presents itself within the grooves, the interconnecting waters, yet we still do not experience time passing - we witness the now with its reflection onto time’s clues of existence. To feel time is to time-travel through the imagination and its interpretation. I desire to be imaginative always.
