Arrival
the first thing i always notice when i
step off of a plane is how the air feels in my lungs. the one thing i love
about landing in hawaii is feeling the air trying to calm my thoughts. i feel
my body fighting the calm, however. i questioned this discord for a long time.
today, when i arrived, i figured it
out.
i
am not from here. and i don’t belong here.
it would appear that this is a mental
block; as if anyone who moved to this island could adapt to the lifestyle, the
atmosphere, the people, etc. but the more i leave and come back, the more i
realize that it would be naïve to try to pass as someone who belongs here.
because i don’t. i was born in the midwest. landlocked. i was born in the
middle of a thousand drainage pipes leading to a thousand sewers leading to a
thousand rivers and eventually it all falls from the sky and starts the whole cycle
over. that’s grade school science.
but
this island
it’s
different
it’s
not my home
i
am a tourist
whether
i like it or not
i
am always planning on my next arrival.
but now that i’m
here, there’s no point in arguing semantics. physically, it doesn’t matter if i
belong or not. the fact is, i am present. i have arrived. and i will be amongst the hundreds of thousands of other
tourists seeking solitude.
what will i do with my time?
nothing.
everything.
and
whatever is in between.
earlier today, i
was sitting on a plane flying toward the horizon. i looked out and the sun didn’t
seem to move for hours. i watched the sunset for an eternity. and i started
seeing things in layers. i imagined myself sitting on the top of a skyscraper.
the clouds spread in all directions and they were the new earth. a flat,
weightless expanse of earth. and on top of that white layer was the burning
fire red of the sun, blasting across the tops of the pearl cloud-grass. i
imagined that this was the wind, blowing through the wheat fields in the
country. and on top of the blasting fire red, was a soft layer of yellow. and
that was the air. it filled the void between the wind and tips of space. high
above this tall layer of yellow air was a green sub-stratosphere. this was the
sky. a green sky. a white earth.
then i saw that it was
just the world as we know it turned upside down.
and these layers, no
matter what color, make us feel safe.
but they are just the
inside of a colossal infinite expanse.
on either side, there is
immeasurable nothingness.
i stared and
stared at this sunset, for an eternity. after i painted and erased the mosaic
from my mind, i started to feel as if the plane wasn’t moving at all. like our arrival depended on catching up to the speed of the rotation of
the earth and just waiting for it to revolve underneath us until this island
happened to line up in our path. i felt like a finger hovering over a
desk-globe, watching it spin until i could press my fingertip down
on
perfect
the
place.
and
maybe then, i would find solitude.
maybe then, i
would arrive at some kind of
conclusion.
instead of searching
for new ways to say the same thing
over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over
again.
if my mind was a
map,
and meaning was my destination,
and purpose was my
method of transportation
how long would
it take?
when would i
arrive?
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