Aliens
I find this all
difficult to accept.
That I - as in myself as a tangible thing - am nothing
but a white canvas stretched over a white ceramic mold. And I am conditioned to
tell myself that tomorrow is the day I will make everything happen that I
couldn't make happen today. When in truth, I have no true feeling of solidarity
in the day that is tomorrow.
Look at yourself. A portion of liquid dripped over a
sugar cube. You've given yourself the purpose you intend to live the rest of
your life for. How can this be construed as pure? As meaningful? When it is
nothing but absinthe. You are nothing but absinthe. A concentrated amount of
alcohol poured over the world. A world that dissolves beneath you.
And yet.
There is love.
There is a body you engross. There is a heart that beats.
There is the tangible. The backward and the forward flow of time. The
ever-flowing extract of mind-dew. We call these thoughts.
We! As if there were others who could ever fathom the
exact perspective you possess. That is the folly of man. Thinking there is a
"we" somewhere amidst the "I's."
I would challenge my own doubt. I would struggle and
scurry away because I know that I have felt partnership and companionship and
camaraderie. But these feelings of togetherness - so theoretical - make me feel
so alone in comparison.
Perhaps that is the mission. The aim. That we try to
discover this loneliness in ourselves through our understanding of empathy
toward the other. Toward those other white canvases stretched over white
ceramic mold. Toward the statues that are ourselves, embodied in some distant
figure. Aliens.
I was born in the Midwest. Missouri to be precise. All of
my time spent there was spent running away from an inescapable winter. Inches
upon inches of snow that would inevitably fall in December and January and
February. But today I looked back at all my winters. And only a minute amount -
a handful at most - had any hint of snow.
I saw the winter in my mind. I saw how cold it could have
been. And because I saw it, because I felt it tighten my skin and pores, I
feared it all my life. And the same goes for these aliens. These strangers that all of us - as if there were an
"us" - struggle to coordinate with. All the safety we've felt in the
arms of our friends makes us fear our time spent alone.
This is the misconception of my generation:
That being
alone is a burden.
We have become accustomed to the touch of another human.
We have been spoiled by compassion and empathy. We sit in front of our
computers and wait for an answer to our lonely hearts crying out for
recognition.
But if we could only take some time away. If we could
bask in the truth that comes from experiencing loneliness in its entirety, how
brilliant our appreciation for this life would become! We would see these white
canvasses stretched across a gigantic, massive mosaic! We would see ourselves
in the hearts and eyes of our friends. And really see. Really look into the
mirror for once.
I have come to understand that the only way to see
yourself is to be alone with yourself; to feel the hurt in yourself and to
compare that hurt to the happiness you've been given through the people that
call themselves your friends.
Those other lonely beings. Those other strange entities
searching for a partner. Those other tattered pieces of this cosmic mosaic.
Those aliens.
