My bones are not graphite, and they have far less potential. The marrow inside, seeping an everlasting regeneration, an unfurling upon unfurling of cells seeking a never-ending goal of unknown cause-is much akin to the cyclical processes of my id. I am at the will of my organic nature, the habits of my cells unknown to me in every regard. And yet within a pencil, its cells have died. Permanently subdued, its materiality transitions to spiritual purpose. And such is why I envy it. It encapsulates its final moments of life, and yet lives beyond it in sublimity. Not as such will be me. A terror to not be as useful to the world beyond my own flesh, and to only feel my singular soul; what of the tree and its branches? If I had only been a sapling, instead of something now other, still reaching deeper into soil and bedrock, able to know far greater things in simplicity-untouched by pride, ego, or the subjugation of will and purpose. Lessened would the hand feel, to measure and make me into what I am meant to be. Would God not do so with my humanity? On the particulars of substance, my insides could not illustrate in multitudes, my soul could not linger or seep into paper, but remain, vapid and depleted, sequestered in its inkwell.

 

If but once a transformation could take place within me-so that life grasped me wholly, and flung me into creation, to be so delightfully attuned to my purpose and skill, to be singular and without peculiarity in humanness, which has so far stifled me. It would become my own gospel, and thus I could truly begin. A recklessness of thought (a pervasive, poisoned infestation) has committed itself to me, if not since the start of my inquisition, then long before in trinklings of symptoms: enumeration of specific feelings, their placement within my body, naming, unnaming, categorizing, recategorizing, until all that was left of my vessel was the remnants of a collapsed spirit, disregarded out of growing frustration and languor. I had always been thoroughly engrossed in the subject of consciousness, from the moment I “woke up” at my very smallness, in the back of a car and wondering what it all was. An insurmountable stillness, awareness of my being, my inside to my skin to the wrapping of something else unknown just above, what I would come to understand as my energy and intuition. It felt utterly inane, and somehow shameful. There was an appetite founded on the how and why of being, a pursuit in the answers undoubtedly contrived from feeling plucked and flung out of truly nothing. And when I learned of my cells, and the atoms within, and again that I was more not me than me, it throttled me and left me gasping for air, all the while crying out for an explanation. I slowly left the questioning alone, realizing more in age the search was in vain. How could I come to an answer, find the obscure knowledge of just being? How simple and mundane it is to permit myself the obsession, to be so radicalized in ego and futility? From adolescence, I wished for only quietness. A release of these inwardly ambitions, which had poisoned my blood, made my heartbeat so rapidly and left a feeling of weariness in my limbs, had grown in feverish malice; mania anchored in my chest, bubbled in my throat, and dispersed like wicked ivy upon my thoughts. So cruel were the moments left without distraction, moments alone in my bed at night strangled me as I feared the coming world. The ultimate Catechism, leering and assembling judgment, penetrating my core, and observing me whole, prescribed further cynicism on my perceptions. Why must I see things such as they are? Are the arrays of cones and rods, fluid and fibrous bits that make up my sight-so wonderful as it is-truly unique to myself? How would one ever know the veritas of the world, in its magnificence, is not but an exaggerated illusion, or even so a deficiency of the body in perception? And then the journey of such perception as skewed by my conscious overture, in that my blue is not your blue and does not have the same impression among us, not the same bias of observance for its element. My whole being shall now also be examined, thoroughly disintegrated, and reviewed, and in judging my own integrity make myself redundant. If I should know the ways of the earth, and the naturality of the world in all explanation and category, then perhaps I could truly make myself who I am to be. How could purpose come before insight? When the light of my eyes as a child swiftly moved from side to side, a temporary moment of neurological anomaly, I felt it as a spiritual possession. There was something unknown, with which my simple humaneness failed in recognizing; when I became untethered, a single moment in which my eyes became glazed over, unable to become refocused, and the hair on my neck raised, a departure from my mind as my own became known to me, and I felt as if God himself were strangling me. I am again questioning the integrity of my parts, feeling as if there was an unreliable narrator guiding me through my existence, and in doing so letting slip their awful, wicked disguise.

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Time comes, overbearing, constantly. How must I move from moment to moment, without the tiredness of my soul feeling like sludge from frame to frame? It feels almost mocking, that my spirit yields to the never-ending cycle, that time shall not stop, and I shall know no true rest until my final moment. And how so can it be when a moment is longer than it ought to be-when fragile wings move in air, and almost as if life were finally halting, that they move in sync with the pumping of my blood-a divine alignment occurs between my eyes and the grace of existence, so bothersome as to jump my heart into my throat.

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How so then, with all these questions and reflections shall I sequester myself to purpose, initiate the genesis of my function, which has pitted me against the pencil? In the beauty of making, in which I have seen others find peace, delight and adoration, the process has imbued me with doubt and apprehension. No truths have yet to reveal themselves to me, so how should I reveal unto the world my distorted sense of truth? I once sought to replicate the world around me, and the world as I imagined, and now only feel pity in the attempt to mimic the grandiosity which surrounds me. How would the heavens paint the Earth, if not but scoff and place the cosmos in my hands instead? And the heavens shall be found in the soil, as well as in oil slicked across street puddles. The monuments of people raise stone and glass inspires of seduction, castles resting on riverbanks whose mass becomes a burden on the earth, the structure weighing your sins in approach. People go there to worship their God, and I worship the river. In the mass of every fine thing in the world, I have the temptation to sift through it all, to organize and place into piles every different particle of life in altars, great lands of only sand, and only seaweed, rusty nails, loose feathers, polka dots, algae, curtain rods, lightning bugs, muslin cloths, pine needles, limestone, receipts, bloody cloths, ink, films, poppy seeds, lost bones, mountain snow, unreturned books, and all that there is. Which pieces of the world will be where I spread my hopes and aspirations, and chain my carnality, lunacy, sin, and potential? No, I should not belong there. Even with the greatness and beauty of the earth in these piles, the whole of humanity with kindness, grief, failure and mercy, and time undeterred-none is so deserving to hold my ashes as my lover. Heaven would then ask me the truth of my purpose, and I will be happy to ignore the question.

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