FROG

 

A frog croaking on a lily pad. Darkness below and darkness above.  Streaks of moonlight, scent of flowers and mud, the buzz of a million, trillion insects.  Peaceful.  Tranquil. 

Curled up on the floor.  Fetal.  Crying endlessly.

There is some hilarity to be found in my recognition of frogs.  The last time I happened upon one in the wild was over a decade ago.  Yet the sound of their croaks is familiar, unforgettable.  Memories have slipped from my mind endlessly during this period.  Some just after their creation, some longer than that, but many have faded from my recollection entirely.  Without having seen or heard a frog in what I would guess would be half of my life I can tell you exactly how one looks, how one sounds.  Is this knowledge so simple that it is unable to be lost? So innocuous that it will forever hold a small portion of my brain for itself?  Eventually all of my memories will fade to black, and the only image left in my consciousness will be a large frog, floating on a lily pad.  The water jet black.  The piercing white of the moon a sliver of shine through the deep.  Bugs stirring about it.  Unaware.

Sometimes I get thinking about how there is no meaning at all. People attribute these effects to everything. Some things are bad, some things are good.  "Good" and "Bad," they decided.  It is more like we are dancing for nobody. All performers, no audience. When I think about it too long I can't materialize the thoughts as well.  Sort of backwards isn't that.  Lately I have come to think that the meaninglessness is cool. It makes me feel alive. It makes me want to live.  Like, really live.

Before I used to think this way, forces would impart themselves on my thought process.  I became a person who worries about the world around me, more than it worries about me.  Instead of that, I want to feel completely free in my own body.  I want to put on a song and get lost in it. Not in a simple way, either.  To listen and feel and move. Surrounded by people, perhaps, but dancing by myself.  Fully grooving. When I fully accept that nothing matters, it doesn't sap me of hope and wonder. It makes me feel free. The cognitive shackles that I attached open right up.  Rather, the mental self-flagellation. All the ideas I have about fear and worry and perception were developed before I knew I didn't have to develop them.  Which makes me realize that my mind has gained strength.  As my body grew, so, too, has my mind.  Wisdom fully realized.

When you conjure certain ideas and gaze upon yourself from an outside perspective, you have a certainty to face. There will come a point when my life will end. There won't be a chance to look back and assess it, it will come without warning and without preparation. I want to know at the end. Know without knowing. That I tried my best to be happy.  The only way to ensure that is to create my own fulfillment out of nothing.  It sounds daunting, but when you are at a level of introspection it is involuntary.  Natural.  As natural as a frog on a lilypad.

In the face of certain Calamity, in the face of Inevitable Defeat, the only thing left is to live.  We all do it by virtue of having no other option.  Whether we enjoy it or not.  Whether we understand it or not.  Whether it ends up good or bad. You only have yourself, the idea of yourself, a sense of self. To pursue is the only choice. Better than nothing at all and better than not trying.  Better than fear, better than submission.  A formal summation is non-existence and I am forced to strive.  Strife in the face of everlasting void.  The simplicity of it all is quite stunning.

A song ends and the feeling that it thrust upon me lingers slightly longer, but the silence takes over.  Back to the norm, the standard, the rigorous lockstep of complacency, the frail machine: unthinking, unquestioning, uniformly nondescript.  My soul pours out of my ears and my eyes and my head until I am altogether empty.  Another song pops on and joy and love and otherworldly desire grip my heart as if to pump start it.  New blood flows in on the notes, and out comes waves of melodic emotion, soul fuel.  In these moments we are in touch with something greater than ourselves.  Not out of our control, not knowingly out of our desire until we seize it.  I am here to seize it.  As a frog on a lilypad on a jet black lake seizes a fly with it's tongue. 

What happens now?

Why?

As soon as the question was asked I had an answer ready, but I let my mind dance around it for some time, anyway. It reminded me of exercises I used to do. Meditation, zen, willpower. What was asked was not what I wanted to answer, though. The 'why' of reason was supposed, but I am far more concerned with the 'why' of 'for what purpose.' So the first ideas bounced around my head. There are many reasons why someone might do something. All sound, logical, sensical explanations. A reason can be found, can be understood, can be accepted. A reason can be believed, can be observed, mostly, can be forced into our scope of comprehension because we are used to it.

The question of purpose makes my mind move in a different manner. It dances through my head a spore on the wind, drawls about as spoken word, slurred and slow, at the very same time racing and screaming back and forth in a box. Faster than comprehension, faster than I picture myself to be able to process, yet I can still fathom.

Why does reading a passage elicit fear, elation, sorrow, anguish? Why do I long for old memories? There exists fragments of emotion, captured and stored for later. Why do I form words to communicate?Why do I struggle? Why am I made to feel a certain way, against my will, against my judgment, against my life? Better to ask why a bee makes honey. Less foolish to ask why a river flows. More pertinent to ask what's next.

The necessity of purpose pulls at me. Questions stab at me, unarmored and unlearned, and I pull the blade deeper. I breathe in the toxin of uncertainty, suck down noxious bile. I swim in the slime of regret, coating my flesh and reminding my form. Again and again, on repeat, always returning. I wonder why. I force upon myself the burden of the past, the weight of the present, the duty of the future. Cumbersome treads the road, a familiar path, no less haphazard than last time, exact and repetitive, yet I stumble in the briars at the precise same location, and I let the thorns prick my fingers just for curiosity, though I already know the result. Madness consumes me and is gone in an instant, washed away in a dark wave, a black tide. Here and gone, now and forever, I stand at the shores of time and I steel myself in the face of the everlasting. Why will never be known. The unknown becomes me. Listless and afraid I persist in torment and somehow, delighted, emerge: reborn     knowing     the     why     of     it     all.  There is no why. There is no magic. There is only what has happened and what will continue to happen. I am still here and smiling and that is enough. I am enough. I will always be.

Back to the question at hand.

Why?

Why indeed.

The space of a blink

     As I sat in my car after just starting it, I had that feeling where you walk into a room and forget where you're going. Temporary amnesia. You sit aloof and ponderous, briefly stuck in a state of idiotic bliss.  Exiting my womb, I came to the realization I had saliva in my mouth. I gathered it up and spat it right into the windshield. That brought me back to reality faster than an alarm yanking me from dreamland. The clear, new spit hung tight on the window, as I tried to wrap my simple mind around what just happened. I was unprepared for the mess I'd made so I pulled my coat sleeve up over my fist and wiped at it awkwardly. The angle of the window and the length of my jacket's arm made it difficult to get entirely, and so I disembarked with a new window slime and an appreciation for a clear view.

     I got to my cousin's house late. Thinking about how I might explain this lapse of thought to anyone who might encounter the result consumed what was left of my mental resources and caused me to drive past the turn for his house and 4 blocks further still until my body once again caught up to my brain and rectified the situation. For a while I contemplated not even going. A few seconds in the wrong direction and I was already caving in to doubt. Doubt was always on the edge of my thoughts, sliming up the perimeter and greasing the causeway. Then a monotonous hammer of infinitesimal inconvenience breaks down the fragile neural wall my brain aggravatingly just fixed. Even still, a wall several times rebuilt is as strong as it's most recent erection. This one was structurally defective.

     I decided not to go. I wouldn't even make up a lie. I parked and texted my cousin I wouldn't be over. Faced with a now overwhelming amount of free time, I pondered my options. I went with the old classic. Listen to music on my bed with the lights off. It was around 5 pm, but it was raining, so the natural shine creeping in the windows was few and gray. Concise beams of cloudy sun made pretty shapes that had never been made before. I got lost in the sounds of the chords and the rhythm of the light. Almost 3 hours had passed before the light disappeared entirely and left me in a deep shade.  The only light now was the LED glow of my phone. It was so drowningly dark and I loved it. Even the sound was darkened. I couldn't rightfully explain it but I felt at home in the darkness. Concealed, hidden, and safe. The deep blue artificial beep of my phone's glowing notification indicator briefly illuminated parts of my room to my focused eyes. I was a spy on a secret mission, deep in enemy territory, looking over my surroundings for strengths and weaknesses. I was a spectre surveying his shadow kingdom, in tune with the very essence of the air and connecting with it in an ethereal way. I was a young boy, lost and alone on a distant planet, with only a faint unfamiliar light to guide his way. I was a teenager sprawled out on his bed.

I remembered I had somewhere to be at this precise moment. I rolled over and closed my eyes.

Caged brain

Out of all the dragonflies in the world, she was the only one that was mechanical. Born in a world of caution paint, alarms and metalwork. Her joints stronger and her legs more functional. She was unknowingly the pinnacle of her kind, though she felt like lake scum. Being free to think and ponder and live among her real-life counterparts was some torture enacted by an unjust creator.

A typical day consisted of her trying to talk to other dragonflies around her. They would respond with a series of buzzes and motions and flaps of their wings. Futility incarnate. Then she would eat. She only ate because she saw others doing it. She never felt hunger or taste and was considerably faster than any insects she would encounter. Lately she would kill a bee or a fly or a beetle and hoist it's corpse around for a while, pretending like it was part of her. This is a new development, as she used to drag them back to her home inside a dead tree and toss them about. She grew tired of it as she does all things. Always thinking of new ways to appease her creator. The one who doesn't ask for appeasement.

Every few days she'll go into her tree and it will get dim. Her body moves against it's will and she goes through certain processes. She touches cold steel, feels warm air, is gripped in a tight chamber, stays still for a very long time, then the process repeats in reverse and her tree home becomes bright again. Sometimes all the middle parts are cut out and it just goes dark then light again with no happenings in between. She used her accursed powers of thought to analyze this situation to no end. It has become the only routine part of her life.

She has outlived every dragonfly she has come in contact with. She has seen them be struck down by larger predators and eaten with gusto. She has been witness to their bodies breaking down and quitting on them. She stands alone atop the spire. An unvirtuous symbol of something unknown. Not wanting attention or treatment but having it forced upon her.

She even tried to break herself before. Flying headlong into trees and bugs and lizards with abandon. Her familiar dark room antics only to wake her up with new parts. Fixed but still capable of thought.
Still broken.

There was a day when things were different. An exercise in patience turned into a differentiation. Refusing to leave her home in her tree, she sat and stared and waited and waited and waited. And waited. And then nothing happened. No darkening, no reawakening. Just waiting. Tons of watching the walls of her tree and staring until she eventually got up and left. Flying in one direction for as far as her body would take her. But wait, why was she slowing down? This had never happened before. She never grew slower or weaker. This time though she was losing altitude and dropping speed. She decided, for the first time ever, to take a rest. And maybe just wait for a little longer. And then the darkness came once more. And it never went away.